JV  5HI 


AMERICAN   LITERATURE 


ALPHONSO    GERALD   NEWCOMER 

PROFESSOR    OP    ENGLISH    IN    THE    LELAND    STANFORD 
JUNIOR     UNIVERSITY 


SCOTT,  FORESMAN  AND  COMPANY 

CHICAGO  NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,  1901,  1913 

By 
SCOTT,  FORESMAN  AND  COMPANY 


PREFACE 


The  method  of  teaching  literature  exclusively  through  a 
historical  text-book  has  for  many  years  been  discredited.  The 
substitution,  however,  of  the  study  of  a  few  selected  "  master 
pieces"  has  also  proved  unsatisfactory,  both  because  it  leaves 
literature  unrelated  to  history,  and  because  it  leaves  the  stu 
dent  without  any  sense  of  relations  and  proportion  in 
literature  itself.  The  remedy  is  sought  in  a  compromise. 
None  will  attempt  to  teach  literature  today  without  requir 
ing  liberal  reading  in  the  works  of  important  writers;  but  at 
the  same  time  this  reading  will  be  regulated  and  the  required 
knowledge  set  in  order  by  the  use  of  a  critical  history. 

Careful  organization,  therefore,  should  characterize  every 
such  history.  There  should  be  adequate  recognition  both  of 
the  various  phases  of  literature  and  of  individual  writers.  The 
selection  of  a  few  names,  however  truly  representative,  will 
not  answer;  and  no  writer  may  be  presented  in  isolation  from 
the  rest.  Doubtless,  for  the  purpose  of  elementary  study,  in 
which  memory  plays  so  great  a  part,  some  sharpness  of  outline 
is  needed,  and  this  calls  for  a  partial  detachment  of  authors. 
But  relations  must  still  be  attended  to,  and  proportion  ob 
served.  The  lesser  men  may  be  crowded  down,  but  they 
should  not  be  thrown  out;  they  are  needed  to  give  the  right 
perspective — to  show  that  literature  is  not  an  affair  of  some 
half  a  dozen  overtopping  names,  but  that  it  is  a  wide  activity, 
without  definable  metes  and  bounds.  At  the  same  time  the 
wise  teacher  will  avoid  burdening  his  pupils'  memories  with 
the  more  colorless  names  and  dates,  which  are  to  be  seen 
rather  than  looked  at,  like  the  minor  features  of  a  landscape 
that  lie  outside  the  focus  of  the  eye. 


470018 


6  PREFACE 

In  the  matter  of  critical  estimates  the  writer  of  a  text-book 
finds  himself  in  a  position  of  uncomfortable  responsibility. 
Immature  students,  unused  to  judgment,  and  unable  to  test 
the  opinions  delivered  to  them,  often  take  those  opinions 
without  question,  like  so  much  gospel.  At  first  thought,  the 
only  safe  course  would  seem  to  lie  in  rigidly  following  "current 
estimates."  But  it  should  be  possible  to  preserve  independ 
ence  of  judgment  without  giving  way  to  personal  vagary, 
and  at  the  worst  a  little  heresy  may  serve  to  stimulate  the 
student's  critical  faculty.  After  all,  only  time  can  determine 
where  the  heresy  lies.  Current  criticism,  for  instance,  tends 
perceptibly  to  depreciate  our  native  literature.  Possibly  one 
who,  like  the  writer  of  this  book,  has  an  honest  admiration 
for  our  less  academic  writers,  and  ventures  to  set  himself 
against  this  attitude,  may  find  himself  justified  in  the  end. 

Of  course,  the  writer  of  a  text-book  in  this  field  owes  much 
to  certain  standard  critical  works.  For  the  early  period  the 
books  of  Professor  Tyler,  unhappily  now  concluded,  are  indis 
pensable.  For  the  later  period  Mr.  Stedman's  Poets  of  Amer 
ica  is  a  natural  guide,  though  Mr.  Stedman  has  such  an  easy 
way  of  winning  assent  that  one  who  values  his  own  independ 
ence  will  use  him  charily.  Professor  Richardson's  American 
Literature  is  valuable  for  the  whole  field.  Professor  Wendell's 
Literary  History  of  America  has  come  too  late  to  be  of 
service  to  the  present  work,  but  it  is  included  among  the 
books  of  reference.  All  are  commended  to  the  student 
with  the  simple  advice  to  make  the  usual  allowance  for  per 
sonal  and  local  influences.  Mr.  Stedman,  for  instance,  though 
he  never  fails  to  do  justice  to  the  Cambridge  men,  is  disposed 
to  make  more  of  the  New  York  poets  —  Bayard  Taylor  and 
others  —  than  their  merit  seems  to  warrant;  while  on  the 
other  hand  Professor  Wendell  of  Harvard,  though  certainly 
never  prejudiced  in  praise  of  New  England  genius,  treats  with 
scant  courtesy  the  Muses  of  the  Crotonian  fount. 


PREFACE  7 

The  list  of  late  writers  included  in  the  appendix  of  this 
book  is  to  be  regarded  chiefly  as  a  directory.  Upon  many  of 
these  writers  it  is  altogether  too  early  to  pass  judgment,  and 
many  of  the  names  have  been  admitted  principally  for  the 
reason  that  they  are  likely  to  be  sought  for,  or  to  make  a  more 
complete  exhibition  of  the  tendencies  of  a  time  or  a  locality. 
The  somewhat  full  references  and  suggestions  for  study  are 
intended  for  aids  in  the  class  room. 

Thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  Lindsay  T.  Damon,  of  the  Univer 
sity  of  Chicago,  for  most  helpful  criticism,  both  upon 
organization  and  upon  details.  Acknowledgment  is  also  due 
to  Messrs.  D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  of  New  York,  the  publishers 
of  Bryant's  works,  and  to  Mr.  David  McKay,  of  Philadelphia, 
the  publisher  of  Brown's  and  Whitman's  works,  for  permission 
to  make  extracts  from  books  of  which  they  hold  the  exclusive 
copyright. 

Stanford  University,  Cal.  A.  G.  No 

May  18,  1901. 

Advantage  has  been  taken  of  the  opportunity  afforded  by 
the  making  of  a  new  set  of  plates  for  this  work,  to  revise  it, 
whenever  revision  seemed  called  for,  from  beginning  to  end. 
The  names  of  Riley  and  Moody  have  been  admitted  to  the 
text,  the  record  of  deaths  has  been  brought  up  to  date,  and 
there  have  been  some  changes  and  additions  in  the  classified 
list  of  writers  in  the  appendix.  Though  personal  feelings  and 
tastes  may  change  much  in  ten  years,  general  critical  opinion 
cannot  shift  greatly  in  that  time,  and  the  author  sees  no 
reasons  to  modify  any  of  the  larger  aspects  of  the  judgments 
herein  recorded. 
July,  1913. 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE       ....••••••         5 

INTRODUCTION  .  .....•• 


PART  I.    BEGINNINGS 

FROM  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  VIRGINIA  IN  1607  TO  THE 
END  or  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

I.     THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD     ......  17 

History 19 

Poetry         ...  .  • 

Theology  •          •  25 

II.     TRANSITION.  —  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  .          .  32 

III.     THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD        .....       38 
Oratory  and  Political  Prose 
Poetry      ...  .  .42 

PART   II.     THE   CREATIVE   IMPULSE 
FROM  MAINE  TO  GEORGIA  —  1800-1860 

IV.     THE  NEW  ENVIRONMENT           .          .                    .          .  55 

Charles  Brockden  Brown             .....  55 

Minor  Early  Fiction     .          .          .                     .  61 

Washington  Irving  ...... 

James  Fenimore  Cooper         .....  77 

Early  Poetry     .....                     ...  93 

William  Cullen  Bryant           .          .^      -.          .    '      .  100 

V.     ROMANCE             .  .                              •          •.        .111 

Edgar  Allan  Poe            .  . 

The  Minor  Romancers  .          .                     •                     .127 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne  .           .           •           •           130 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 147 


10  CONTENTS 

VI.     THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MOVEMENT    .          .          .          .  150 

Religion  and  Philosophy  in  New  England             .  .150 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson          .....  156 

Henry  David  Thoreau     .          .          .          •    .      •  .169 

VII.     NATIONAL  LIFE  AND  CULTURE  .....  181 

Oratory  ...  .  .  .  ...     181 

History  and  Criticism           .          .          .          .          .  187 

Henry  Wads  worth  Longfellow            .  .        ,           .  .191 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier       .          .         ...          .          .  205 

James  Russell  Lowell       '»           .           .-         .           .  .     215 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes         .           .          ...         .  230 

Minor  Poetry  and  Miscellaneous  Prose       .           .  .     242 

Walt  Whitman             .        \         '.          .          .          .  252 

PART  III.     LATER  ACTIVITY 

FROM  THE  ATLANTIC  TO  THE  PACIFIC  —  1860-1900 

VIII.     POETRY  IN  THE  SOUTH           *          .          .          .          v  .     270 

IX.     PROSE  AND  POETRY  IN  THE  WEST       .          .    .      .          .  276 

X.     POETRY  AND  CRITICISM  IN  THE  EAST       ....     288 

XL     LATE  MOVEMENTS  IN  FICTION   .          .          .          .-          .  295 

CONCLUSION           ....         ..,  (  :      •          .          .  •     307 

APPENDIX 

A  Classified  List  of  Late  and  Contemporary  Writers  .     313 

Chronological  Outline     -  .          .           .           .           .           •  328 

References            ...                      .  •     336 

Suggestions  for  Reading  and  Study    ....  340 

INDEX           .          .          .          .          „          .          .          .          •  •     355 


INTRODUCTION 


The  English  colonies  on  the  western  Atlantic  seaboard, 
and  their  political  successors,  the  United  States  of  America, 
have  won,  by  many  and  varied  achievements,  a  conspicuous 
place  in  the  history  of  civilization.  But  no  form  of  art  stands 
high  among  those  achievements,  and  American  literature 
cannot  yet  take  rank  with  the  great  literatures  of  the  world. 
It  could  scarcely  be  otherwise.  Before  the  arts  can  flourish, 
there  must  be  a  certain  security  of  social  and  political  life. 
This  security  can  come  only  after  its  foundations  have  been 
laid  in  the  struggle  for  existence  itself,  in  the  successful  pro 
viding  of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter.  The  occupants  of  the 
New  World  have  been  busy  bringing  the  wilderness  under  cul 
tivation,  experimenting  with  a  bewildering  variety  of  soil  and 
climate,  and  exploring  the  countless  sources  of  material 
wealth.  Above  all,  a  population  nominally  English,  but 
really  of  diverse  nationalities,  has  been  learning  the  hard 
lesson  of  self-government  under  novel  and  trying  conditions. 
There  has  been  little  leisure  to  devote  to  art. 

It  is  further  to  be  considered  that  the  brief  life  of  the 
nation,  as  such,  has  fallen  in  an  age  of  remarkable  scientific 
and  material  advance.  What  other  centuries  were  content  to 
refer  to  vaguely  as  "wonders  of  nature"  have  in  the  nine 
teenth  century  been  searchingly  investigated,  to  the  opening 
up  of  new  and  apparently  boundless  fields  of  knowledge. 
The  impulse  once  given,  it  is  not  surprising  that  men  should 
neglect  the  more  abstruse  creations  of  their  brains  for  the 
absorbing  study  of  the  creations  around  them  and  the  utiliz- 

11 


12  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 


ation  of  cheir  discoveries  in  the  practical  concerns  of 
life.  Energies  that  in  another  age  would  have  gone  to 
the  making  of  a  statue  or  a  poem  have  been  steadily 
diverted  to  science  and  the  mechanic  arts.  And  a  nation 
like  our  own,  young  and  eager,  with  all  the  means  for 
scientific  investigation  and  material  progress  and  none  of 
the  stimulus  of  ancient  art,  would  of  all  nations  feel  this 
impulse  most  keenly. 

The  effects  upon  our  literature  are  evident.  During  only 
one  of  the  three  centuries  since  the  permanent  occupation 
of  America  by  the  English  people  has  much  literature  worthy 
of  the  name  been  produced.  Few  of  our  writers  have  been 
writers  primarily,  and  few  of  them  have  left  any  such  volume 
of  work  as  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  the  names  of 
great  European  authors.  In  quality,  too,  our  literature  is 
often  like  a  thin  wine,  without  body.  Many  things  are 
lacking  to  it.  A  transplanted  people,  we  are  not  like  a  race 
that  is  born  to  the  inheritance  of  its  land  and  bound  together 
by  long  community  of  interests  and  of  purpose.  We  have  no 
barbarous  or  legendary  past  to  enrich  our  chronicles  and  fire 
our  imaginations.  Chivalry  and  feudalism  have  no  direct 
part  in  us.  We  have  no  national  deities  or  patron  saints;  no 
ancient  and  mystic  priesthood;  no  fairies,  no  knights,  no  cour 
tiers,  no  kings.  We  have  not  even  a  distinct  national  name 
about  which  traditions  might  gather  and  which,  like  Merrie 
England  or  La  Belle  France,  would  serve  to  conjure  with  in  the 
realm  of  art.  Thus  our  literature  quite  lacks  the  peculiar 
flavor  sometimes  known  as  race.  It  lacks,  too,  the  atmos 
phere  of  aristocracy,  and,  in  a  sense,  the  atmosphere  of 
religion.*  Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  it  lacks  the  feeling  for 
artistic  repose,  the  sense  for  proportion  and  beauty;  for  the 
strenuous  moral  and  intellectual  life  of  our  ancestors  has  left 
us  a  heritage  aesthetically  barren. 

*  Charles  Johnston,  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  July,  1899. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

Still,  there  are  compensations.  A  new  world  is  at  least 
new,  and  its  writers  may  find  novel  themes  and  fresh  inspira 
tion  just  over  their  thresholds.  Our  colonial  and  national 
history  has  not  been  uneventful.  There  have  been  religious 
crusades,  financial  and  industrial  panics,  and  wars  both  for 
eign  and  domestic.  The  very  social  chaos  which  paralyzes 
art,  the  conflict  and  tumult  of  diverse  races  struggling  towards 
unity,  is,  to  one  who  can  detach  himself  and  observe,  a  highly 
dramatic  spectacle.  Besides,  the  world  of  nature  does  not 
materially  change.  In  a  new  country,  indeed,  the  lure  of  out 
door  life  is  peculiarly  strong.  And  in  variety  of  natural 
features,  in  charm  of  landscape,  in  diversity  of  seasons,  in 
wealth  of  flora  and  fauna,  the  old  world  has  no  advantage  over 
the  new.  Still  less  does  human  nature  change,  and  wherever 
two  men  find  room  to  stand  together,  the  primal  passions  will 
assert  themselves  and  the  poet  find  his  song.  It  was  only  a 
question  of  time  when  there  should  be  an  American  literature, 
and  the  time  was  not  unduly  long  in  coming. 

Now,  indeed,  some  portion  of  our  literature  is  safely  en 
shrined  as  classic,  and  it  is  possible  for  us  to  look  back  upon  a 
fairly  definite  and  complete  epoch.  The  literary  spirit,  the 
instinct  to  record  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and  observations  of 
men,  has  its  fluctuations.  At  times  it  is  strong  and  fertile, 
at  other  times  weak,  at  still  others  barren.  But  at  no  time  in 
our  history  has  the  literary  spirit  been  absolutely  barren,  and 
through  one  period  it  was  strong  enough  to  leave  a  record  at 
once  great  and  worthy  —  great  in  insight  and  originality,  and 
of  adequate  art.  Now  that  that  period  seems  to  be  passed 
and  that  its  leaders  are  gone  with  it,  the  history  of  American 
literature  may  be  written  without  fear  or  apology. 

Manifestly  there  can  be  no  elaborate  time-division  of  a 
literature  that  has  had  but  one  era  of  high  accomplishment. 
The  simple  facts  stand  out  clearly:  first,  that  down  to  the 
very  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  scarcely  a  book  was 


14  AMERICAN   LITERATUTE 

published  in  America  that  is  read  today  for  its  imaginative 
or  artistic  qualities;  second,  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteeth  century  letters  were  for  the  first  time  recognized  in 
America  as  a  profession,  and  that  though  the  work  of  the  best 
writers  was  still,  for  several  decades,  either  slender  or  crude, 
the  literature  of  the  nation  grew  steadily  in  breadth  and 
quality  until,  toward  the  middle  of  the  century,  we  had  in  the 
East  a  group  of  writers  who  were  recognized  as  great  both  at 
home  and  abroad,  and  whose  work  we  still  rank  clearly  above 
all  that  has  been  produced  since;  and  third,  that  in  the  last 
few  decades,  or  since  our  civil  war,  the  literary  impulse  has 
betrayed  itself  in  every  corner  of  our  land,  sending  forth  a 
wealth  of  literature  of  which  some  account  must  be  taken,  but 
upon  which  judgment  cannot  yet  be  final.  These  three  large 
and  well  defined  periods  may  be  indicated  thus : 

I.  THE  BEGINNINGS,  extending  from  the  founding  of  the 
colony  at  Jamestown  in  1607  down  to  about  1800. 

II.  THE  CREATIVE  IMPULSE,  extending  from  the  first 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  civil  war. 

III.  THE  PERIOD  OF  LATER  ACTIVITY,    extending    from 
the  civil  war  to  the  present  time. 

It  will  be  well,  at  this  point,  to  note  also  some  geographical 
distinctions.  Before  the  wide  diffusion  of  our  literature  with 
the  growth  of  our  territory  and  population,  it  flourished  only 
along  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  That  region  may  be  conven 
iently  divided  into  three  sections:  the  North,  or  Massachu 
setts  Bay  region— New  England — with  a  literary  capital  at 
Boston;  the  South,  or  the  region  about  the  James  River  and 
Chesapeake  Bay,  with  literary  capitals  (in  the  later  time)  at 
Richmond,  Baltimore,  and  Washington;  and  the  somewhat 
vaguely  defined  intermediate  region  of  the  Hudson  and  Dela 
ware  Rivers,  with  capitals  at  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 
We  shall  find  first  one  and  then  another  of  these  sections  the 
centre  of  the  highest  literary  activity. 


PART  I 

BEGINNINGS 


FROM  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  VIRGINIA  IN  1607  TO  THE 
END  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    COLONIAL    PERIOD.— CAVALIER,    PURITAN, 
AND   QUAKER 

1607—1765 

Our  forefathers  did  not  find  it  easy  to  cultivate  simul 
taneously  the  soil  and  the  Muses.  Their  situation,  like  that 
of  most  colonists,  was  an  unnatural  one.  There  was  a  lack 
of  harmony  between  themselves  and  their  surroundings  which 
only  generations  of  slow  adjustment  could  remedy.  On  the 
one  hand  they  were  far  too  civilized  to  develop  a  folk- 
literature  of  song  and  legend,  while  on  the  other  hand  their 
environment  was  too  primitive  to  foster  that  literature  of 
culture  which  the  educated  element  among  them  was  fitted  to 
enjoy.  In  England  the  era  immediately  before  and  after  the 
colonization  of  America  was  eminently  an  era  of  court  litera 
ture.  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  courtier,  warrior,  romancer,  and 
poet,  was  the  ideal  of  the  early  Elizabethans.  Spenser  never 
ceased  to  mourn  his  half-enforced  banishment  to  the  wilds  of 
Ireland.  The  dramatists  flocked  to  London.  Bacon  rose  to 
be  lord  chancellor  and  a  peer.  Milton,  half  a  century  later, 
was  secretary  to  the  Commonwealth.  Dry  den  was  poet 
laureate.  Addison  was  secretary  of  state.  Pope  was  a 
London  "wit,"  who  throve,  like  his  predecessors,  under  a 
system  of  liberal  patronage.  It  was  too  much  to  expect  that 
the  men  who  crossed  the  sea  and  changed  their  sky  should 
change  also  their  nature  and  find  in  their  strange  surround 
ings  inspiration  to  some  new  kind  of  song. 

Of  course,  an  original  genius  might  have  arisen  here. 
But  original  geniuses  are  rare,  and  the  actual  numbers  of  the 

17 


18  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

new  inhabitants  were  so  small  that  the  law  of  chance  was 
against  such  an  event.  Besides,  men  or  families  with  a  strong 
bias  toward  literature  and  art  were  not  likely  to  cast  in  their 
lot  with  bands  of  adventurers.  The  charms  of  nature  were 
little  felt  or  understood.  The  modern  romantic  spirit  was 
not  yet  rife,  and  poets  did  not  fly  to  the  wilderness  to  assuage 
their  woes  or  minister  to  their  love  of  the  picturesque.  Not 
for  more  than  a  century  was  a  Chateaubriand  to  visit  our 
shores,  penetrate  the  "forest  primeval,"  and  stand  in  rapt 
admiration  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  while  the  trunks  of 
fallen  oaks  and  pines  floated  past  him  between  the  islands  of 
yellow  waterlilies.  Moreover,  those  of  Puritan  faith,  coming 
here  for  freedom  to  worship  God  after  their  own  manner, 
were  almost  wholly  bound  up  in  that  worship.  The  emo 
tional  side  of  their  nature,  finding  the  satisfaction  of  its  needs 
in  their  religion,  led  them  neither  to  the  solace  of  the  fields 
and  the  sky  nor  to  the  delights  of  art.  Of  art,  indeed,  they 
were  suspicious,  as  something  concerning  itself  more  with 
form  than  with  spirit,  a  worship,  as  it  were,  of  graven  images, 
and  intimately  connected  with  Rome  and  Romanism,  the 
objects  of  their  most  deadly  hatred. 

Yet  almost  from  the  first  day  of  the  landing  of  the  colo 
nists,  at  Jamestown  in  1607  and  at  Plymouth  in  1620,  writing 
went  on;  for  many  of  the  colonists  were  educated  people, 
and  the  leaders  at  least  were  lettered  men.  The  first  books, 
of  course,  remained  long  in  manuscript  or  were  sent  to  Eng 
land  for  publication.  By  1639,  however,  a  printing-press  was 
imported  and  set  up  at  Cambridge.  On  it  were  printed,  first 
a  sheet  or  pamphlet,  The  Freeman's  Oath,  and  second,  Pierce' s 
Almanack.  The  Bay  Psalm  Book,  1640,  was  the  first  printed 
book.*  In  1636  a  college  (now  Harvard  University)  was 
founded  and  two  years  later  named  after  the  man  who 
endowed  it  with  one-half  of  his  estate  and  a  library  of  three 

*  Books  were  printed  in  Mexico  a  century  earlier. 


HISTORY  19 

hundred  volumes.  By  the  middle  of  the  century  public 
instruction  was  compulsory  in  most  of  the  colonies.  A 
translation  of  the  Bible  into  the  Algonkin  tongue,  made  by 
John  Eliot,  the  "apostle  to  the  Indians,"  was  published  in 
1661-1663,  the  first  Bible  printed  in  British  America.  Just 
when  the  quaint  little  New  England  Primer  began  its  long 
career  of  usefulness  is  not  known ;  there  is  a  notice  of  a  second 
impression  of  it  in  an  almanac  of  1691.*  In  1704  the  Boston 
'News-Letter  marked  the  advent  of  American  journalism,  the 
power  which  has  grown  to  such  gigantic  proportions. 

Such  were  a  few  of  the  significant  events  during  the  first 
century  of  literary  industry  in  America,  an  industry  that  for 
full  another  century  was  to  continue  producing  books  which, 
in  Charles  Lamb's  sense,  are  no  books,  literature  that  is  not 
literature.  Our  review  of  this  product  may  not  be  extended 
or  searching;  the  books  themselves  are  for  the  most  part 
not  easily  accessible,  sufficient  proof  that  they  are  not  live 
books.  The  entire  portion  of  the  colonial  literary  product 
that  either  aimed  at  or  in  any  measure  deserved  permanence 
falls  into  a  simple  classification  under  three  heads — history, 
poetry,  and  theology. 

HISTORY 

The  history  comprises  all  the  prose  of  a  narrative  or 

descriptive  nature.     It  was  but  natural  that  some  of  the 

colonists   should   write   down   a   record   of   their 

Captain 

John  Smith,  doings  from  day  to  day,  in  the  form  either  of 
diaries  or  of  reports  to  the  promoters  of  the  colo 
nies  in  the  mother  country.  Sometimes  these  records  became 
more  ambitious  and  took  on  the  organized  form  and  propor 
tions  of  a  professed  history.  Captain  John  Smith,  the  lead- 

*  Extract  from  "An  Alphabet  of  Lessons  for  Youth": 

"TTOLINESS  becomes  God's  bouse  for-  "TT'EEP  thy  heart  with  all  diligence, 
M~~  ever.  (-*-v  for  out  of  it  are  the  issues  of  life. 

"  TT  is   good  for  me  to   draw  near   unto          "  T  IARS    shall    have    their    part    in    the 
*•     God.  •*•*     lake     which     burns     with     fire    and 

brimstone." 


20  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

ing  spirit  of  the  Jamestown  colony,  whose  affections  seem 
to  have  been  evenly  divided  between  his  sword  and  his 
pen,  has  the  honor  of  inscribing  his  plain  name  first  on 
the  roll  of  the  writers  of  this  new  land.  In  1608  he  sent  back 
to  England  his  True  Relation  of  occurrences  in  Virginia,  and 
sixteen  years  later,  while  he  was  living  in  England,  he  pub 
lished  his  General  History  of  Virginia,  a  more  comprehensive 
account  of  those  matters  relating  to  the  New  World  with 
which  he  was  familiar. 

It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  Smith  was  in  no 
rightful  sense  an  American,  but  an  Englishman,  a  fair  type 
of  the  courtly,  worldly  royalists  who  came  to  be  known  a  little 
later  in  the  English  history  and  in  Virginian  colonization  as 
"cavaliers."  He  had  travelled  eastward  as  well  as  westward, 
and  he  wrote  much  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  America. 
He  spent  less  than  three  years,  all  told,  in  this  country.  His 
name  and  his  works  belong  to  England,  where,  of  course,  their 
little  lustre  was  even  in  his  own  day  quite  eclipsed.  Yet  we 
are  not  ashamed  to  lay  part  claim  to  those  two  works,  the 
first  literary  fruits  of  the  inspiration  of  the  wilderness. 
They  may  not  be  accurate  as  history,  but  they  are  a  voice 
out  of  momentous  days  and  deeds.  For  Smith  put  into  his 
work  no  slight  measure  of  the  heroic,  the  Homeric  quality, 
which  gives  vitality  to  work  in  any  age.  Even  when  he 
was  not  true  to  facts  he  could  not  help  being  true  to  himself, 
and  he  unconsciously  portrays  himself  with  all  his  virtues 
and  vices,  his  energy,  his  bluntness,  his  bravado,  and  his 
egotism.  There  is  no  reason,  however,  to  suppose,  as  has 
often  been  charged,  that  he  was  deliberately  untruthful.  The 
pretty  story  of  Pocahontas,  for  example,  was  for  awhile 
discredited.  But  there  is  more  reason  to  believe  the  story 
than  to  doubt  it.  We  must  simply  remember  the  romantic 
spirit  of  the  man  and  read  him  by  that  light.  When  we  hear 
his  tales  of  the  gigantic  Susquehannocks  whose  language 


HISTORY  21 

"sounded  from  them  as  a  voice  in  a  vault"  and  whose  calves 
were  "three-quarters  of  a  yard  about,"  we  recognize  the 
writer  for  a  man  of  imagination  and  a  worthy  member  of  the 
literary  guild.  He  was  bound  to  magnify  a  little  his  deeds, 
and  through  them  the  deeds  of  his  patrons,  the  "most  noble 
Lords  and  worthy  Gentlemen"  of  King  James's  court;  and 
though  he  chose  to  call  his  book  a  history  and  not  a  romance, 
he  was  not  the  man  to  hang  upon  any  subtle  distinction 
between  the  words  history  and  story.  He  tells  his  story  as 
an  "honest  Souldier"  should,  with  due  regard  to  the  enter 
tainment  of  his  readers.  He  can  be  practical,  too,  as  well  as 
romantic.  He  studies  the  winds  and  the  clouds  in  their 
relation  to  seasons  and  harvests.  He  counts  the  ears  on  a 
stalk  of  corn  and  the  grains  on  an  ear.  He  describes  in  one 
place,  with  minutest  detail,  the  methods  of  cooking  maize, 
but  protests  that  burnt  and  powdered  corn-cob  "never  tasted 
well  in  bread  nor  broth,"  a  point  on  which  his  veracity  will 
scarcely  be  questioned. 

Of  other  writers  in  the  South,  both  in  Smith's  time  and 
later,  honest  chroniclers  enough,  the  names  belong  to  history 

and  not  to  literature.  An  exception  migh*;  be 
strachey.  made  in  the  case  of  one  William  Strachey,  who 

in  his  passage  to  Virginia  in  the  fleet  of  Sir  George 
Somers  and  Sir  Thomas  Gates  was  wrecked  on  the  Bermuda 
Islands  in  1609.  His  True  Reportory  of  the  Wrack,  written 
shortly  after  in  a  letter  to  a  lady  in  England,  is  a  really 
graphic  and  imaginative  account,  and  it  is  by  no  means 
impossible  that  from  this  account,  or  from  a  similar  one  by 
Silvester  Jourdain,  which  was  published  earlier,  Shakespeare 
drew  some  of  the  pictures  and  phrases  used  in  the  description 
of  Prospero's  island  in  The  Tempest.  So  slender  is  the  link 
which  connects  American  letters  with  the  highest  of  England's 
names.  But  the  South,  from  the  first  more  indifferent  to 
letters  than  the  North,  has  never  been  prolific  of  writers, 


22  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

and  with  this  short  notice  of  John  Smith  and  William 
Strachey  we  take  a  long  leave  of  that  region. 

The  historical  writers  of  colonial  New  England,  from 
Governor  William  Bradford  in  the  seventeenth  century  to 
Samuel  Thomas  Prince  in  the  eighteenth,  were  likewise  of 
I652ai730  tne  plodding,  sedate  chronicler  type.  One  or  two, 
however,  succeeded  in  touching  to  a  little  life 
the  record  of  their  times.  We  may  mention  in  particular 
Chief  Justice  Samuel  Sewall,  of  Massachusetts,  the  publi 
cation  of  whose  diary  only  a  few  years  since  has  given  him  a 
new  interest  in  our  eyes.  He  is  memorable  for  several  things. 
He  was  a  judge  in  the  witchcraft  trials  of  1692,  passing 
sentence  for  which  he  afterward  made  a  public  confession  of 
repentance.  He  published  perhaps  the  first  American  tract 
against  slavery.  And  of  one  of  his  prophecies  Whittier  has 
made  a  touching  poem,  praying  that 

"Green  forever  the  memory  be 
Of  the  Judge  of  the  old  Theocracy." 

But  it  is  the  diary,  faithfully  kept  through  a  long  lifetime, 
that  forces  itself  most  upon  our  attention,  and  while  we  can 
not  take  a  profound  interest  in  its  minute,  gossipy,  and 
unimaginative  record — in  the  fact  that  the  Judge  period 
ically  had  his  hair  cut,  or  that  his  pussy-cat  died  in  her 
thirteenth  year — the  book  makes  yet  its  appeal  to  our  human 
sympathies  and  will  be  read  by  many  who  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  look  into  the  more  scholarly  works  of  Bradford 
and  Prince. 

POETRY 

Poetry '  in  early  New  England  throve  even  less  than 
"Bay  Psalm  narrative  and  descriptive  prose.  Indeed,  to  call 
Book."  any  Qf  tne  verse  Of  that  t[me  poetry,  argues 

a  lack  of  humor.  The  Bay  Psalm  Book,  for  instance,  was  a 
heroic  attempt,  conspired  in  by  three  worthy  divines,  to  set 


POETRY  23 

the  Psalms  to  metre  and,  when  fortune  favored,  rhyme.  The 
verses  were  intended  to  be  sung  to  the  five  or  ten  tunes 
which  the  churches  possessed.  Here  is  one  of  the  more 
successful  stanzas : 

'Yee  gates  lift-up  your  heads 

and  doors  everlasting, 
doe  yee  lift-up:  &  there  into 

shall  come  the  glorious-King." 

Few  will  succeed  in  reading  even  this  stanza  smoothly  at 
the  first  attempt.  Such  utter  uncouthness  of  form,  as  far 
removed  from  Miltonic  harmonies  as  "from  the  centre  thrice 
to  the  utmost  pole,"  shows  how  small  a  part  even  the  mere 
reading  of  poetry  can  have  played  in  the  culture  of  the  New 
World  Puritans. 

Nevertheless,  the  Puritans  raised  up  poets,  according 
to  their  tastes  and  abilities.  The  poems  of  one  of  these, 
Anne  Mistress  Anne  Bradstreet,  were  introduced  to  the 

Bradstreet.  .    . 

wighfesworth  ltls  a  Amencan  public  of  1650  under  this 
'alluring  title,  devised  doubtless  by  her  London 
printer:  The  Tenth  Muse  lately  sprung  up  in  America;  or, 
Several  Poems,  compiled  with  great  variety  of  wit  and  learn 
ing,  full  of  delight.  Whatever  delight  may  lie  concealed  in 
the  rather  voluminous  verses, — The  Four  Monarchies,  The 
Four  Elements,  Contemplations  (published  later),  and  other 
physical  and  metaphysical  speculations, — is  not  worth 
seeking  for  today.  Some  genuine  terror,  however,  may  still 
be  extracted  from  the  verses  of  one  of  Mrs.  Bradstreet 's 
contemporaries,  Michael  Wigglesworth,  who  in  his  Day  of 
Doom  (1662)  set  to  a  lilting,  double-rhymed,  Yankee  Doodle 
sort  of  measure  his  conception  of  a  Calvinistic  Judgment, 
infant  damnation  and  all.  The  following  is  a  fair  example 
of  the  product  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Wigglesworth's 
poetic  frenzy : 


24  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

"  They  wring  their  hands,  their  caitiff-hands 

and  gnash  their  teeth  for  terrour; 
They  cry,  they  roar  for  anguish  sore, 

and  gnaw  their  tongues  for  horrour. 
But  get  away  with  out  delay, 

Christ  pities  not  your  cry: 
JDepart  to  Hell,  there  may  you  yell, 

and  roar  Eternally." 

Sad  to  relate,  the  poem  was  as  popular  in  its  day  (and  its  day 
lasted  a  hundred  years)  as  the  Psalm  of  Life  has  been  in  ours. 
Of  some  thirty  pre-revolutionary  writers  of  verse  whose 
names  stand  recorded  in  the  more  elaborate  histories  of  our 
literature,  one  more  may  be  mentioned  here.  This 
was  Thomas  Godfrey,  a  watchmaker's  apprentice 
of  Philadelphia,  who  died  in  the  South  in  1763 
at  the  age  of  twenty-seven.  His  poems  were  published 
two  years  later.  The  most  notable  among  them  was  The 
Prince  of  Parthia,  a  blank-verse  tragedy,  which,  though 
like  the  rest  crudely  juvenile,  points  at  least  to  an  intimate, 
acquaintance  with  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare.  The  imi 
tation  is  sometimes  very  bald,  These  lines,  for  example,  are 
a  clear  echo  of  Horatio's : 

"  E'en  the  pale  dead,  affrighted  at  the  horror, 
As  though  unsafe,  start  from  their  marble  jails, 
And  howling  through  the  streets  are  seeking  shelter." 

And  these,  of  Lear's: 

"Dead!  she's  cold  and  dead! 
Her  eyes  are  closed,  and  all  my  joys  are  flown. 
Now  burst,  ye  elements,  from  your  restraint, 
Let  order  cease,  and  chaos  be  again, 
Break!  break,  tough  heart!"* 

But  there  are  also  passages  that  show  a  power  quite  inde 
pendent  of  imitation,  and  Thomas  Godfrey  deserves  to  be 

*  See  Hamlet,  I.,  i.,  115;  Lear,  III.,  ii. 


THEOLOGY  25 

remembered  as  the  first  of  America's  few  adventurers  into 
the  dramatic  field.  His  drama  was  a  closet  drama  only. 
One  of  the  earliest  native  plays  to  be  regularly  staged  and 
acted  was  Royall  Tyler's  satirical  comedy,  The  Contrast, 
1786. 

THEOLOGY 

History,  poetry,  and  theology, — these  three  were  the 
forms  in  which  colonial  literature  chiefly  enshrined  itself, 
and  the  greatest  of  these  was  theology.  The  Puritans  who 
settled  New  England  were  practically  religious  refugees,  men 
seeking  a  land  where  they  should  be  free  to  worship  as 
their  consciences  dictated.  Their  government  was  essentially 
theocratic — God  was  their  great  law-giver  and  the  Bible 
their  chief  statute-book.  The  New  England  Primer  was 
half  catechism  and  prayer-book.  The  church,  or  meeting 
house,  was  the  centre  of  the  community,  and  the  ministers 
were  the  most  learned  men.  It  was  inevitable  that  literature, 
which  always  reflects  the  highest  intellectual  and  spiritual 
interests  of  a  people,  should  take  on  a  strong  theological  cast. 

This  theology — by  which  of  course  is  meant,  not  religion 
itself,  but  a  special  system  and  doctrine  of  religion  (in  this 
case  chiefly  Calvinism) — appears  first  in  the  unlovely  guise  of 
controversy.  The  persecution  which  the  Puritans  had  en 
dured  had  not  chastened  them.  They  could  be  as  intolerant 
of  those  who  did  not  agree  with  them  as  ever  their  own  perse 
cutors  had  been,  and-  in  their  course  they  saw  no  inconsist 
ency.  The  profound  conviction  that  they  alone  were  right 
justified  them — left,  indeed,  no  other  course  open.  In  1637 
the  Synod  of  Massachusetts  took  a  definite  stand  against 
religious  toleration.  In  the  same  year  Anne  Hutchinson  was 
banished  for  heresy;  and  Roger  Williams,  the  great  apostle 
of  toleration,  had  been  banished  two  years  before.  Heresy 
became  the  crime  of  the  age,  and  ministers  thundered  from 
the  pulpit,  while  laymen  poured  out  vials  of  printed  wrath. 


26  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  book  of  this  earlier  period  was 
Nathaniel  Ward's  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  published  at 

London  in  1647.  Ward  had  himself  been  driven 
Wardaniel  out  of  England  for  heresy  by  Archbishop  Laud, 

and,  to  judge  from  his  book,  he  found  solace  in 
America  by  attacking  everything  that  offered  a  fair  mark, 
from  the  doctrines  of  the  Baptists  to  the  Parisian  millinery  of 
the  women.  "I  dare  take  upon  me  to  be  the  herald  of  New 
England  so  far  as  to  proclaim  to  the  world,  in  the  name  of 
our  colony,  that  all  Familists,  Antinomians,  Anabaptists,  and 
other  enthusiasts,  shall  have  free  liberty — to  keep  away 
from  us;  and  such  as  will  come — to  be  gone  as  fast  as  they  can, 

the  sooner  the  better To  tell  a  practical  lie 

is  a  great  sin,  but  yet  transient;  but  to  set  up  a  theoretical 
untruth  is  to  warrant  every  lie  that  lies  from  its  root  to  the 
top  of  every  branch  it  hath,  which  are  not  a  few!"  Such 
proclamations  would  hardly  win  converts — the  spirit  is  too 
warlike  to  be  Christian.  Yet  the  force  and  picturesqueness 
of  the  style  suit  well  with  the  independence  of  the  opinions, 
and  it  is  easy  to  see  behind  them  the  earnestness  of  the  man. 
Greater  men  than  Ward  took  part  in  this  theological  con 
flict  There  was  John  Cotton,  one  of  the  greatest  pulpit 

orators  of  the  time,  who  had  likewise  been  driven 

John  Cotton,  ' 

1585-1652.  from  England  by  Laud,  and  who  came  irom  the 
Wiiuams,^  old  Boston  to  the  new,  which  was  named  in  his 
honor.  With  little  of  Ward's  fiery  and  contro 
versial  temper,  he  had  yet  attempted  to  justify  the  banish 
ment  of  Roger  Williams,  and  when  the  latter,  in  defense,  pub 
lished  his  Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution  for  Cause  of  Conscience 
(1644),  Cotton  felt  bound  to  reply  to  it  with  The  Bloody  Tenet 
washed  and  made  white  in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb  (1647) .  So  the 
controversy  went  on,  amiably  enough  in  the  main,  and  not 
without  a  considerable  array  of  learning  on  the  part  of  Cotton, 
and  with  graces  of  both  mind  and  style  on  the  part  of  Williams, 


THEOLOGY  27 

But  on  the  whole  this  theological  literature  pursued  a 
stern,  uncompromising  way.  An  age  of  fanaticism  followed, 
marked  by  such  manifestations  as  the  Salem  witchcraft 
craze  of  1692  and  the  great  religious  revival  of  1740-1745. 
It  almost  seems  as  if  the  Puritans,  left  to  themselves  in  the 
wilderness  (for  there  were  few  recruits  from  the  old  world 
after  1640,)  were  in  danger  of  reverting  to  the  gross  supersti 
tions  of  primitive  peoples.  Their  history  proves  at  least  that 
there  can  be  education  without  enlightenment.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  we  find  such  book-titles  as 
Discourse  Concerning  Comets;  Illustrious  Providences;  Mem 
orable  Providences  relating  to  Witchcrafts  and  Possessions,  ivith 
a  Discourse  on  the  Power  and  Malice  of  Devils;  Wonders  of  the 
Invisible  World. 

All  the  books  just  named  were  written  by  Increase  and 
Cotton  Mather,  father  and  son,  both  eminent  divines,  and 
Cotton  koth  indefatigable  writers.  Cotton  Mather,  in- 

JJather^  deed,  stands  clearly  at  the  head  of  the  writers  of 
colonial  New  England.  His  grandfathers,  John 
Cotton  and  Richard  Mather,  had  been,  like  his  father, 
preachers  and  writers  before  him,  and  his  son  was  a  preacher 
and  writer  after  him.  He  was  a  prodigy  of  learning,  who 
spent  ten  hours  a  day  in  his  study,  and  who  published  in  one 
year  fourteen  books  and  pamphlets,  and  in  his  life-time 
nearly  four  hundred.  His  great  book,  over  which  he  prayed 
and  fasted  and  wept,  and  which  was  published  in  folio — the 
only  folio  in  our  literature — in  1702,  is  entitled  Magnolia 
Christi  Americana;  or,  The  Ecclesiastical  History  of  New 
England  from  its  First  Planting  in  the  Year  1620  unto  the  year 
of  our  Lord  1698.  It  is  primarily  a  church  history,  as  the 
title  and  introduction  indicate: 

"I  WRITE  the  WONDERS  of  the  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION,  flying  from  the 
depravations  of  Europe,  to  the  American  Strand;  and,  assisted  by  the 
Holy  Author  of  that  Religion,  I  do  with  all  conscience  of  Truth, 


28  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

required  therein  by  Him,  who  is  the  Truth  itself,  report  the  won 
derful  displays  of  His  infinite  Power,  Wisdom,  Goodness,  and  Faith 
fulness,  wherewith  His  Divine  Providence  hath  irradiated  an  Indian 
Wilderness." 

The  book  is  difficult  to  describe,  difficult  indeed  to  read, 
though  as  students  of  American  literature  we  are  bound  to 
hold  it  in  reverence;  "the  one  single  literary  landmark,"  says 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  "in  a  century  and  a  half  of  colonial 
and  provincial  life — a  geologic  record  of  a  glacial  period." 
Our  great  New  England  writers  have  all  been  more  or  less 
familiar  with  it.  Longfellow,  for  example,  drew  from  it  the 
legend  versified  in  his  poem,  The  Phantom  Ship.  But  as  a 
historical  document  it  is  quite  untrustworthy  in  details;  its 
chief  value  lies  in  the  light  which  it  throws  upon  the  theo 
logical  interests  and  the  superstitious  temper  of  the  times. 
Its  literary  value,  too,  is  slight.  Beautiful  and  imaginative 
phrases  may  be  found  in  it,  but  in  a  larger  sense  it  can 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  any  style  of  its  own,  such  a  conglom 
eration  is  it  of  the  fragmentary  learning  of  all  ages  gathered 
cogether  to  embellish  the  plain  statements  beneath.  All  the 
pedantic  vices  of  the  fantastic  school  of  folio  writers  are  here 
in  their  most  exaggerated  form.  The  pages  are  sprinkled 
with  learned  allusions,  Greek,* Latin,  and  Hebrew  phrases, 
quotations,  italics,  puns,  Bible  references,  and  so  forth. 
Thus,  for  example,  runs  the  account  of  the  presidents  of  Har 
vard  College: 

"After  the  death  of  Dr.  Hoar,  the  place  of  President  pro  tempore, 
was  put  upon  Mr.  Urian  Oakes,  the  excellent  Pastor  of  the  church  at 
Cambridge;  who  did  so,  and  would  no  otherwise  accept  of  the  place; 
though  the  offer  of  a  full  settlement  in  the  place  was  afterwards  im 
portunately  made  unto  him.  ....  Reader,  let  us  now  upon 
another  account  behold  the  students  of  Harvard-Colledge,  as  a  ren 
dezvous  of  happy  Druids,  under  the  influence  of  so  rare  a  President. 
But,  alas!  our  joy  must  be  short  lived;  for,  on  July  25,  1681,  the 
stroak  of  a  sudden  death  fell'd  the  tree,  Qui  tantum  inter  caput  extulit 


THEOLOGY  29 

omnes Mr.  Oakes,  thus  being  transplanted  into  the  better 

world,  the  Presidentship  was  immediately  tendered  unto  Mr.  Increase 
Mather;  but  his  Church,  upon  the  application  of  the  overseers  unto 
them  to  dismiss  him  unto  the  place  whereto  he  was  now  chosen, 
refusing  to  do  it,  he  declined  the  motion.  Wherefore,  on  April  10, 

1682,  Mr.  John  Rogers  was  elected  unto  that  place He 

was  one  of  so  sweet  a  temper,  that  the  title  of  delicioe  humani  generis 
might  have  on  that  score  been  given  him;  and  his  real  piety  set  off 
with  the  accomplishments  of  a  gentleman,  as  a  gem  set  in  gold.  In 
his  Presidentship,  there  fell  out  one  thing  particularly,  for  which  the 
Colledge  has  cause  to  remember  him.  It  was  his  custom  to  be  some 
what  long  in  his  daily  prayers  (which  our  Presidents  use  to  make) 
with  the  scholars  in  the  Colledge-hall.  But  one  day,  without  being 
able  to  give  reason  for  it,  he  was  not  so  long,  it  may  be  by  half,  as 
he  used  to  be.  Heaven  knew  the  reason  !i  The  scholars,  returning  to 
their  chambers,  found  one  of  them  on  fire,  and  the  fire  had  pro 
ceeded  so  far,  that  if  the  devotions  had  hel  1  three  minutes  longer, 
the  Colledge  had  been  irrecoverably  laid  in  ashes,  which  now  was 
happily  preserved.  But  him  also  a  praemature  death,  on  July  2, 
1684,  the  day  after  the  Commencement,  snatcht  away  from  a  society 
that  hoped  for  a  much  longer  enjoyment  of  him,  and  counted  them 
selves  under  as  black  an  eclipse  as  the  Sun  did  happen  to  be,  at  the 
hour  of  his  expiration." 

Imposing  as  this  book  was  in  its  day,  and  important  as  it 
still  is,  it  finds  almost  no  readers  now  but  students  of  history. 
The  third  and  latest  edition  was  published  in  1853. 

Theology    took   yet    another    turn, — from   controversy, 
through  fanaticism  and  superstition,  back  to  abstract  dis 
quisition.     In  this  last-named  phase  we  see  it  most 

Jonathan  ..  .       .  i  -i  •       i    •         i 

Edwards,  strikingly  exhibited  in  the  career  and  works  01 
Jonathan  Edwards,  who  was  for  twenty-three 
years  pastor  of  the  church  at  Northampton,  Massachusetts, 
subsequently  missionary  to  the  Indians,  and  finally  for  a  short 
time  president  of  the  college  of  New  Jersey  (Princeton). 
Edwards  was  a  man  of  remarkable  intellect,  a  born  reasoner, 
and,  living  when  and  where  he  did,  he  naturally  turned  the 
powers  of  his  brilliant  mind  to  theology.  He  took  the  literal 


30  THE    COLONIAL   PERIOD 

statements  of  the  Bible,  and  with  unshrinking  logic  pushed 
them  to  the  most  terrible  conclusions.  He  could  depict 
— for  with  all  his  logic  he  had  a  poetic  imagination — the 
glories  of  heaven  and  the  happiness  of  the  saints,  but  he  be 
came  most  notorious  for  those  sermons  which  were  devoted  to 
portraying  the  miseries  of  the  damned.  The  religious  excite 
ment  of  1740—1745,  known  as  "the  Great  Awakening,"  during 
which  the  English  preacher  Whitefield  preached  to  assemblies 
of  thirty  thousand  people  on  Boston  Common,  took  its  origin 
in  Edwards's  church.  Edwards  is  best  remembered,  however, 
not  for  his  sermons,  but  for  his  monumental  work  on  the  Free 
dom  of  the  Will,  published  in  1754.  In  this  he  tried  to  prove 
that  man  is  not  a  free  agent  and  yet  is  responsible  and  punish 
able  for  all  his  misdeeds,  and  he  argued  so  well  that  few  have 
tried  to  confute  him.  Nevertheless,  common  sense  today 
generally  refuses  to  be  troubled  by  such  speculations,  and  the 
once  famous  treatise  is  more  often  alluded  to  than  read. 
Jonathan  Edwards  stands  simply  as  the  one  great  meta 
physician,  or  builder  of  a  systematic  philosophy,  that  America 
has  produced.  Emerson,  in  the  next  century,  is  a  philosopher 
of  a  very  different  type. 

There  is  one  other  writer  who  must  be  named  in  this  con 
nection,  though  his  life  touches  the  Revolutionary  period  and 
his  work  is  not  properly  theology.  This  is 
Wooiman,  John  Woolman,  of  whom  Charles  Lamb  said, 
"  Get  the  writings  of  John  Woolman'  by  heart, 
and  love  the  early  Quakers."  He  was  a  New  Jersey  tailor 
and  itinerant  Friend  who  in  his  life-time  published  several 
tracts  in  opposition  to  the  "Keeping  of  Negroes"  and  who 
died  in  1772,  leaving  behind  a  Journal  which  was  published 
in  1774.  There  have  been  many  editions  of  the  Journal  since, 
one  having  been  edited  by  Whittier,  another  by  Dr.  Charles 
W.  Eliot,  and  it  would  not  be  quite  fair  to  say  that  Benjamin 
Franklin's  Autobiography  is  the  only  American  book  of  the 


THEOLOGY  31 

eighteenth  century  that  lives  today.  Woolman's  book  lives, 
although  obscurely;  indeed  it  has  in  it  a  simplicity  and  relig 
ious  sincerity  that  will  remind  one  of  Bunyan,  together  with 
a  sweetness  and  tenderness  even  beyond  Bunyan  and 
sufficient  to  account  for  its  hold  upon  life.  One  does  not 
readily  forget,  for  example,  such  a  confession  of  youthful 
thoughtlessness  and  remorse  as  this : 

"Once  going  to  a  neighbor's  house,  I  saw  on  the  way  a  robin 
sitting  on  her  nest,  and  as  I  came  near  she  went  off,  but  having  young 
ones,  flew  about,  and  with  many  cries  expressed  her  concern  for  them. 
I  stood  and  threw  stones  at  her,  till  one  striking  her  she  fell  down  dead. 
At  first  I  was  pleased  with  the  exploit,  but  after  a  few  minutes  was  seized 
with  horror,  as  having,  in  a  sportive  way,  killed  an  innocent  creature 
while  she  was  careful  of  her  young.  I  beheld  her  lying  dead,  and 
thought  those  young  ones,  for  which  she  was  so  careful,  must  now 
perish  for  want  of  their  dam  to  nourish  them;  and  after  some  painful 
considerations  on  the  subject,  I  climbed  up  the  tree,  took  all  the  young 
birds,  and  killed  them,  supposing  that  better  than  to  leave  them  to 
pine  away  and  die  miserably.  And  I  believed  in  this  case  that  Scrip 
ture  proverb  was  fulfilled,  '  The  tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are  cruel. ' 
I  then  went  on  my  errand,  but  for  some  hours  could  think  of  nothing 
else  but  the  cruelties  I  had  committed,  and  was  much  troubled." 

It  is  pleasant  to  relieve  the  impression  left  by  the  stern 
theologians  of  New  England  with  this  humble  Christian  diary 
of  a  New  Jersey  Quaker. 


CHAPTER  II 

TRANSITION.— BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 
1706-1790 

The  figure  of  one  great  American  looms  large  through  the 
eighteenth  century.  Born  but  three  years  after  the  birth  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  and  dying  but  nine  years  before  the  death 
of  Washington,  Benjamin  Franklin  spans  with  his  career  the 
entire  transition  from  American  colonial  dependence  to  inde 
pendence,  union,  and  nationality.  The  story  of  this  poor 
tallow-chandler's  son  and  printer's  apprentice,  migrating 
from  Boston  to  Philadelphia,  and  growing  and  expanding 
with  the  fortunes  of  his  country  until  he  came  to  be  a  lion  of 
the  social  centres  of  Europe  and  ambassador  to  the  courts  of 
kings,  reads  like  a  romance.  But  stripped  of  its  glamour  it  is 
seen  to  be  a  plain  tale  of  sterling  worth  and  tireless  industry. 

We  shall  not  repeat  it  here:  it  is  best  read  in  his  own 
words  in  the  famous  Autobiography.  Nor  does  it  come  prop 
erly  within  the  scope  of  a  history  of  literature  to 

A  Many-  .  i  •    i      i  •  •  i     i 

Sided  enumerate  the  services  which  this  many-sided  man 

rendered  to  America  and  the  world  during  his 
long  career, — services  which  range  from  the  invention  of 
stoves  to  the  demonstration  that  lightning  and  electricity 
are  the  same,  and  from  the  development  of  newspaper 
advertising  to  the  drawing  up  of  the  first  plan  for  the 
union  of  the  American  colonies.  For  Franklin  was 
journalist,  scientist,  philosopher,  statesman,  diplomatist, 
and  philanthropist  in  one.  As  for  the  writings  which 
he  left  behind  him,  though  they  fill  nine  volumes,  they 

32 


JONATHAN    EDWARDS 
BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 


COTTON    MATHER 
PHILIP    FRENEAU 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN  33 

were  produced  incidentally,  and  were  quite  the  least 
part  of  his  life-work.  His  name  does  not  primarily  belong 
to  literature. 

Yet  Franklin  is  for  more  than  one  reason  exceedingly 
interesting  to  the  student  of  literature.  In  the  first  place,  his 
writings,  like  his  life,  mark  a  transition.  He  represents  a  new 
spirit  in  American  letters — the  change  that  had  come  over  the 
people  in  the  generations  of  their  existence  in  the  New  World. 
The  practical  instincts, — self-reliance,  shrewdness,  humor, 
thrift, — all  of  those  qualities  that  we  sum  up  in  the  word 
Yankee,  were  being  surely  developed  by  a  life  of  constant 
hardship  and  enforced  self-denial.  And  Franklin  is  the  first 
great  exponent  of  them.  While  he  still  held  to  many  of  the 
sterner  virtues  of  the  Puritans,  he  found  the  mainspring  of 
those  virtues  on  earth  rather  than  in  heaven.  He  preached, 
not  godliness,  but  honesty,  charity,  and  manliness;  and  he 
accomplished  quite  as  good  results  as  the  Puritans,  by  order 
ing  his  life,  not  as  if  he  were  going  to  die  tomorrow,  but 
rather  as  if  he  were  going  to  live  a  hundred  years.  Such  is  the 
gospel  of  his  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  through  which  he  first 
came  to  fame;  and  the  new  American  spirit  at  its  best — and 
at  its  worst,  too,  for  it  was  provincially  rude  and  unenlight 
ened, — is  to  be  found  reflected  in  the  pages  of  that  curious 
annual. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  an  almanac  was  one  of  the 
first  publications  of  the  American  press.  Indeed  it  is  only 
in  our  own  day  of  cheap  books  and  newspapers 
that  this  particular  form  of  light  literature,  com 
bining  information  and  advice  with  amusement, 
has  lost  its  popularity.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  almanac 
issued  as  a  private  enterprise  was  ever  better  adapted  to  its 
patrons  or  became  more  justly  celebrated  than  that  which 
Franklin  began  to  issue  in  Philadelphia  in  the  year  1732  and 
continued,  mainly  under  his  own  supervision,  for  twenty -five 


34  TRANSITION 

years.  The  price  of  it  was  five  pence,  and  the  sales  ran  up  to 
ten  thousand  copies  a  year.  Such  is  its  fame  that  today  a 
single  copy  of  the  original  will  sell  for  twenty  dollars.  The 
Almanac  professed  to  be  written  by  "Richard  Saunders, 
Philomath."  There  had  been  an  English  philomath  of  the 
same  name,  and  there  was  also  a  famous  English  almanac 
called  "Poor  Robin."  Of  course  the  name  "Poor  Richard" 
was  only  a  mask  for  Franklin,  who  openly  announced  himself 
as  the  printer  of  the  pamphlet.  That  the  philosophy  of  Poor 
Richard  was  not  always  original,  "but  rather  the  gleanings 
of  the  sense  of  all  ages  and  nations,"  imports  little.  That 
was  only  to  be  expected  in  a  publication  of  such  a  nature. 
Franklin's  genius  showed  itself  in  the  way  in  which  his  philos 
ophy  was  gathered  and  adapted  to  the  tastes  and  needs  of  his 
readers.  Poor  Richard,  who,  according  to  his  own  descrip 
tion,  was  "excessive  poor"  and  his  "wife,  good  woman, 
excessive  proud,"  became  a  very  real  personage  to  the  thous 
ands  of  people  in  all  stations  of  life  who  quoted  his  pithy 
maxims  and  recited  his  homely  verses.  These  were  given 
the  readier  currency  for  the  humor  that  so  often  accompanied 
them.  Indeed,  the  comic  feature  of  the  Almanac  became 
easily  its  distinctive  one,  so  that  Poor  Richard  stands  as  a 
kind  of  forebear  to  a  long  line  of  droll  philosophers,  from 
Diedrich  Knickerbocker  to  Tom  Sawyer.  The  humor  is 
frequently  of  a  kind  that  the  taste  of  the  present  age  would 
denounce  as  vulgar  or  even  obscene,  but  the  general  tone  of 
the  maxims  is  as  wholesome  as  it  is  hearty. 

"God  helps  them  that  help  themselves." 

"He  that  drinks  fast  pays  slow." 

"It  is  hard  for  an  empty  sack  to  stand  upright." 

"Silks  and  satins,  scarlet  and  velvets,  put  out  the  kitchen  fire." 

"The  poor  man  must  walk  to  get  meat  for  his  stomach,  the  rich 
man  to  get  a  stomach  to   his  meat."  * 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN  35 

"Three  may  keep  a  secret,  if  two  of  them  are  dead." 
"A  good  conscience  is  a  continual  Christmas." 
"He  that  by  the  plow  would  thrive 
Himself  must  either  hold  or  drive." 

And  so  they  run  on:  "Keep  thy  shop,"  "Early  to  bed,"- 
nearly  every  tongue  will  finish  them  of  its  own  accord,  so 
familiar  are  they.  This  is  literature  only  by  a  very  liberal 
definition  indeed,  but  it  is  such  literature  as  everybody  could 
and  did  read,  and  its  influence  for  good  was  beyond  all  calcu 
lation.  The  sayings  were  gathered  together  into  a  kind  of 
running  sermon  for  the  preface  of  the  edition  of  1758,  and  this 
preface,  under  such  titles  as  "Father  Abraham's  Speech," 
"The  Way  to  Wealth,"  "La  Science  du  Bonhomme 
Richard,"*  has  been  printed  literally  hundreds  of  times  and 
translated  into  more  than  a  dozen  languages. 

The  Almanac,  which  afforded  Franklin  fame  and  com 
petence  in  his  early  manhood,  was  late  in  life  supplemented 
by  a  work  of  greater  literary  importance.  This  is 
biography."  his  Autobiography,  the  only  American  book  writ 
ten  before  the  nineteenth  century  that  is  still 
widely  known  and  read.  Its  history  is  interesting.  Frank 
lin  of  course  did  not  mean  to  write  a  book — we  have  said  that 
he  was  not  primarily  a  man  of  letters.  It  was  in  1771,  while 
he  was  at  the  country  home  of  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  in 
Hampshire,  England,  that  he  occupied  some  moments  of 
leisure  in  writing  out  an  account  of  his  early  life  in  the  form 
of  a  letter  to  his  son,  then  Governor  of  New  Jersey.  Thir 
teen  years  later,  after  the  manuscript  had  been  actually 
thrown  into  the  street  in  Philadelphia  and  picked  up  by  a 
friend,  who  begged  the  author  to  complete  it,  Franklin,  then 
at  Passy,  France,  added  another  chapter.  And  four  years 

*  The  Bon  Homme  Richard  (that  is,  "Goodman  Richard"),  the  famous  flagship  of  Paul 
Jones,  was  named  by  Jones  in  honor  of  Franklin  at  the  time  when  Jones  was  put  in  command 
of  it  through  Franklin's  advice  to  the  French  government. 


36  TRANSITION 

later  still,  at  Philadelphia,  only  two  years  before  his  death,  he 
continued  the  narrative,  bringing  it  down  to  1757,  the  year 
of  the  beginning  of  his  public  services  abroad.  A  copy  of 
this  account  having  been  sent  to  a  friend  in  France,  a  portion 
of  it  was  there  translated  into  French  and  published,  shortly 
after  Franklin's  death.  This,  it  seems, — though  the  whole 
history  is  somewhat  obscure, — was  turned  into  English  again 
and  published  at  London  in  1793.  Not  till  1817  was  there 
a  direct  publication  of  the  manuscript,  and  not  till  1868  of 
the  original  first  draft. 

The  book,  though  composed  in  this  haphazard  manner, 
and  though  incomplete  and  ill  proportioned,  is  not  without 
merits  of  style.  Franklin  has  told  us  himself  how  studiously 
he  cultivated  his  style,  taking  for  his  model  Addison.  But  it 
is  simplicity,  rather  than  any  studied  grace,  that  gives  the 
Autobiography  its  charm.  To  this  must  be  added  a  resolute 
moral  purpose,  everywhere  apparent  yet  never  morbid  or 
offensive.  The  work  was  frankly  intended  for  the  instruction 
of  Franklin's  son,  and  it  was  a  most  happy  accident  that  so 
incalculably  widened  its  office.  Boys  are  no  longer  in 
demand  to  cut  wicks  for  tallow  candles;  even  typesetting  is 
a  languishing  trade;  but  "self-made  men"  are  still  held  in 
honor,  and  America  will  not  soon  reach  the  stage  when  her 
youth  can  afford  to  omit  the  reading  of  this  simple  life-story 
of  one  of  her  greatest  men. 

Franklin  wrote  nothing  else  of  large  significance,  though 
he  wrote  many  things,  both  in  jest  and  in  earnest,  both  to 
serve  his  country's  need  and  to  afford  an  outlet  for  energies 
that  scarcely  knew  how  to  pass  an  idle  hour.  Many  trifles 
written  while  he  was  in  France,  like  "The  Ephemera," 
"The  Whistle,"  and  the  "Dialogue  between  Franklin  and  the 
Gout,"  designed  for  the  amusement  of  the  circle  of  wits  who 
gathered  about  one  Madame  Brillon,  or  like  the  dream  of  the 
Elysian  Fields  in  his  letter  to  Madame  Helvetius,  show  a 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN  37 

French  delicacy  of  fancy,  a  gayety  and  wit,  that  are  suffi 
ciently  rare  in  American  letters  and  that  are  quite  remarkable 
as  coming  from  Franklin.  They  set  one  to  wondering  what 
this  man  might  have  done  in  literature  had  he  chosen  to  be 
less  of  a  statesman  and  philosopher.  Such  work  as  he  did  do, 
however,  is  on  the  whole  purely  American, — virile,  blunt 
almost  to  rudeness,  with  only  sufficient  polish  to  give  it  cur 
rency.  He  inculcated,  as  we  have  seen,  a  practical  morality 
only,  and  he  did  this  best  in  plain,  unvarnished  prose.  We 
can  see  his  limitation  clearly  enough, — he  partook  but  little 
of  enthusiasm  and  idealization,  and  his  eyes  were  shut  to  the 
poetry  of  life.  His  defect,  in  short,  was  a  defect  of  spirit 
uality,  and  he  stands  in  strong  contrast  to  even  such  feebly 
poetical  men  as  Cotton  Mather  and  Jonathan  Edwards. 
"There  is  a  flower  of  religion,  a  flower  of  honor,  a  flower  of 
chivalry,"  says  Sainte-Beuve,  "that  you  must  not  require  of 
Franklin."  Of  course  we  remember  the  age.  His  life  was 
fairly  contemporaneous  with  that  of  the  great  French  sceptic, 
Voltaire.  And  the  eighteenth  century  in  England  was 
notoriously  an  age  of  prose,  dull  and  unimaginative  in  com 
parison  with  the  centuries  before  and  the  century  after. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    REVOLUTIONARY    PERIOD.  —  INDEPENDENCE    AND 
NATIONALITY 

1765-1800 

The  review  of  colonial  literature  in  the  first  chapter  closed 
with  the  work  of  the  theologians ;  and  a  century  later  theology 
will  be  found  tingeing  still  the  writings  even  of  those  who 
openly  rebelled  against  the  Puritanism  of  their  forefathers. 
But  interest  in  it  had  to  give  way  before  new  and  more  vital 
issues.  Men  cease  to  speculate  on  the  freedom  of  the  will 
when  their  actual  freedom  of  thought  and  deed  is  threatened. 
The  colonies  were  steadily  growing,  from  New  Hampshire  on 
the  north  to  Georgia  on  the  south.  They  were  becoming 
commercially  and  politically  important.  They  found  them 
selves  far  away  from  the  powers  that  governed  them,  and  they 
felt  those  powers  to  be  often  sadly  out  of  sympathy  with  their 
wishes  and  needs.  There  arose  discontent,  rebellion,  revolution. 

To  trace  in  detail  the  growing  sentiment  among  the  colo 
nies  in  favor  of  union,  and  the  growing  dissatisfaction  with 
British  rule,  which  led  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  of 
1776,  is  the  business  of  the  historian,  and  here  a  very  few 
facts  must  suffice.  The  French  and  Indian  War  (1754-1763) 
had  indirectly  much  to  do  with  the  movement  by  showing  the 
necessity  for  union,  perhaps  also  by  proving  the  prowess  of 
American  arms;  and  the  very  year  in  which  Edwards  pub 
lished  his  Freedom  of  the  Will  the  youthful  Washington 
marched  with  a  regiment  of  soldiers  into  the  western  wilder 
ness  to  resist  the  claims  of  the  French.  But  the  more  direct 
causes  were  the  various  measures  passed  by  Parliament  for 
the  taxation  of  the  colonies,  from  the  Importation  Act  of  1733 

38 


ORATORY  AND  POLITICAL  PROSE  39 

to  the  Stamp  Act  of  1765.     Some  of  the  earliest  and  bitterest 
opposition  came  from  Massachusetts,  where,  in  1761,  we  find 
the  oratory  of  James  Otis  inciting  among  the  people,  hints  of 
resistance  by  arms;  and  fourteen  years  later  the  first  armed 
resistance  came  from  Massachusetts .    But  the  movement  cen 
tralized  farther  south.  In  1 765  the  young  mountaineer  Patrick 
Henry  startled  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses  with  his  resolu 
tions  against  British  taxation.     The  First  Colonial  Congress 
met  in  1765  at  New  York,  the  Second  in  1774  at  Philadelphia; 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  signed  at  Philadelphia; 
the  man  chosen  for  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  des 
tined  to  become  first  President  of  the  Union  was  a  Virginian. 
The  literature  of  the  time  might  be  expected  to  follow  the 
course  of  these  events,  and  in  large  measure  it  does.     But 
this  period,  like  the  century  and  a  half  that  had  gone  before, 
was  not  fruitful  of  good  literature.     For  the  most  part  it 
produced  only  the  fleeting  record  of  its  own  immediate  con 
cerns,  in  the  form  of  revolutionary  speeches,  state  documents, 
patriotic  songs.     These  are  all  sincere  enough  and  touch  some 
of  the  noblest  passions  of  humanity,  but  they  lack  art;  and  it 
takes  art  as  well  as  sincerity  to  make  any  work  lasting.     The 
calm,  the  impartiality,  the  sense  of  perspective  which  art 
requires,  are  not  at  the  command  of  one  who  celebrates  con 
temporary  events.     Franklin  in  his  old  age  could  write  with 
masterly  skill  the  story  of  his  youth,  but  not  even  Franklin, 
granting  him  the  poetic  powers  which  he  lacked,  could  have 
fitly  sung  our  nation's  birth.     It  was  reserved  for  Hawthorne, 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  to  transfer  Puritanism  from  history 
to  literature,  and  our  romancers  are  only  just  beginning  to 
busy  themselves  seriously  with  our  revolutionary  age. 


ORATORY  AND  POLITICAL  PROSE 


It  would  be  idle  to  review  at  length  the  oratory  of  the 
period,  or  to  single  out  the  merits  of  this  or  that  orator,  from 


40  THE   REVOLUTIONARY   PERIOD 

James  Otis  of  Massachusetts,  whom  John  Adams  likened  to  a 
"flame  of  fire,"  to  Patrick  Henry  of  Virginia,  who  spoke, 
thought  Jefferson,  "as  Homer  wrote."  These  men  spoke  for 
their  time,  and  not  ineffectually;  and  their  speeches,  devoutly 
preserved,  fired  the  youthful  patriotism  of  several  generations 
and  served  as  models  to  orators  whose  fame  has  since  par 
tially  eclipsed  their  own.  But  we  scarcely  revert  to  their 
speeches  now.  If  we  do,  we  find  them  often  painfully 
"academic";  the  ideas  are  couched  in  stately  and  pompous 
phrase — long,  balanced  sentences,  resonant,  Latinized  dic 
tion,  elaborate  figures.  We  half  fancy  the  orators  must  have 
been  cold  and  unimpassioned  weighers  of  words  and  polishers 
of  periods.  It  was  not  so.  Their  style  was  the  only  style 
taught  and  approved  in  their  day.  Precisely  such  oratory 
was  to  be  expected  of  an  age  which  in  England  elevated 
Samuel  Johnson  almost  to  the  position  of  a  literary  dictator. 
Yet  a  few  of  the  words  then  uttered  echo  still.  We  shall  be 
slow  indeed  to  forget  that  cry  of  Patrick  Henry,  the  most 
gifted,  least  academic  speaker  of  them  all — that  cry  which  is 
the  largest  and  deepest  expression  of  the  spirit  of  the  age: 
"Give  me  liberty  or  give  me  death."  But  our  Revolution 
brought  forth  no  Edmund  Burke,  eloquent,  cultured,  and 
profound,  to  measure  himself  with  Demosthenes  and  Cicero 
of  old.  With  the  noble  Farewell  Address  of  Washington  in 
1796,  the  old  issues  were  fairly  closed.  Daniel  Webster, 
our  greatest  orator,  belongs  wholly  to  another  era. 

On  the  documentary  side  the  literature  was  good,  as  such 
literature  goes.  The  Declaration  of  Independence  easily  takes 
Thoma  rank  with  the  great  state  papers  of  history,  not 

I743eri826  al°ne  because  of  its  political  significance  but  also 
because  of  its  lofty  theme  and  its  earnest  and 
dignified  expression.  It  was  composed,  of  course,  with  the  im 
mediate  object  of  making  a  wide  popular  appeal, — "a  kind  of 
war-song"  says  Professor  Tyler, — and  it  was  but  natural  that 


ORATORY   AND    POLITICAL   PROSE  41 

it  should  contain  some  "glittering  generalities"  and  that  its 
eloquence  should  approach  grandiloquence.  But  it  has  stood 
a  long  and  severe  test,  and  stood  it  well;  and  no  one,  whether 
in  youth  or  age,  can  read  it  without  some  stir  of  emotion.  To 
Thomas  Jefferson  belongs  the  chief  credit  of  composing  it,  and 
Jefferson  was  a  writer  of  considerable  ability.  His  Summary 
View  of  the  Rights  of  British  America,  published  in  1774, 
attracted  contemporary  attention  in.  England,  where  it  was 
republished  by  Edmund  Burke.  Moreover  his  voluminous 
and  scholarly  letters,  which  make  up  the  bulk  of  his  collected 
works,  give  him  a  respectable  rank  among  writers  of  a  class  of 
literature  that  has  been  much  neglected  since  his  day. 

A  most  picturesque  figure  of  this  period,  and  one  closely 
associated  in  ideas  with  Jefferson,  was  Thomas  Paine,  an  Eng- 
Thomas  lishman  who  came  to  America  in  1774,  at  the  age 


of  thirty-seven.  He  had  neither  the  solid  attain 
ments  nor  the  cultivated  tastes  of  Jefferson,  but  he 
had  all  of  Jefferson's  radicalism  and  was  utterly  fearless  in 
parading  it.  Jefferson  had  written  on  the  Rights  of  America. 
Paine  wrote  later,  in  England,  on  the  Rights  of  Man.  He  was 
an  open  sceptic  and  scoffer,  at  war  generally  with  the  estab 
lished  order  of  things.  Such  a  revolutionary  spirit  belongs 
to  no  land,  and  when  the  American  cause  was  won,  Paine 
followed  the  torch  of  revolution  to  France,  declaring,  "Where 
Liberty  is  not,  there  is  my  home."*  After  spending  a  consid 
erable  time  there  and  in  England  he  returned  to  America, 
where  he  died  in  1809.  On  the  whole,  Thomas  Paine  has 
been  too  persistently  remembered  for  his  violence  and  his  so- 
called  atheism,  too  little  for  his  naturally  humane  instincts. 
His  coarse  and  superficial  Age  of  Reason  may  well  be  neg 
lected.  Besides,  that  book,  like  the  Rights  of  Man,  was  not 
written  in  America.  What  Americans  should  remember  him 
for  are  his  'seventy-six  pamphlet,  Common  Sense,  which  may 
have  turned  the  tide  of  popular  sentiment  toward  independ- 


42  THE   REVOLUTIONARY   PERIOD 

ence,  and  the  series  of  tracts,  entitled  The  Crisis,  which  he 
published  through  the  long  and  terrible  struggle  that  followed. 
Common  Sense  was  said  to  have  been  worth  an  army  of  twenty 
thousand  men  to  the  American  cause,  while  the  sixteen 
successive  numbers  of  The  Crisis,  widely  distributed  among 
the  soldiers,  did  priceless  service  in  keeping  alive  their 
patriotism  through  the  darkest  hours  of  Long  Island  and 
Valley  Forge.  It  was.  in  Common  Sense  that  Paine  called 
George  the  Third  the  "royal  brute  of  Britain,"  and  it  was  the 
first  number  of  The  Crisis  that  opened  with  the  still  famous 
sentence,  "These  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls." 

Conspicuous  among  the  statesmen  who  stood  in  oppo 
sition  to  the  extreme  democratic  views  of  men  like  Jefferson, 
were  Alexander  Hamilton,  James  Madison,  and 
rldS-aiist."  John  Jay.  While  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu 
tion  was  still  in  debate  and  strongly  opposed  by 
the  "State-rights"  theorists,  these  men  ably  supported  it  in  a 
series  of  eighty-five  papers  published  anonymously  in  a  New 
York  journal  and  issued  collectively  in  1788  under  the  title  of 
The  Federalist.  The  papers  are  political  essays  of  a  high 
type,  broad  in  principle,  sound  in  argument,  and  stately  in 
style,  and  are  well  worth  the  study  of  those  who  would  culti 
vate  that  kind  of  writing. 

POETRY 

The  verse  of  the  period,  like  the  prose,  rarely  succeeded  in 
detaching  itself  from  current  events;  that  is  to  say,  its  inspira 
tion  was  fitful  and  its  aims  were  immediate  and 
Ballads."        practical  rather  than  ultimate  and  artistic.   Patri 
otic   songs   and  ballads,   satires,   squibs   for  the 
corners  of  newspapers,  were  the  staple  verse  products.      Yan 
kee  Doodle,  of  somewhat  obscure  origin,  sprang  then  into  a 
popularity  that  has  waned  only  with  the  elevation  of  popular 
taste.     Even  then,  it  was  sustained  chiefly  by  its  air,  and 


POETRY  43 

belongs  rather  to  music  than  to  literature.  Music  and  patri 
otism  together  carried  many  a  song  of  slender  literary  merits, 
such  as  Timothy  Dwight's  hymn,  Columbia,  Columbia,  to 
Glory  Arise,  composed  while  its  author  was  chaplain  in  the 
army  during  the  campaign  against  Burgoyne  in  1777,  and 
Joseph  Hopkinson's  H ail  Columbia,  first  sung  at  the  Chestnut 
Street  Theatre  in  Philadelphia  in  1798,  to  the  popular  air  of 
"President's  March." 

In  1775,  1776  John  Trumbull,  a  Connecticut  lawyer,  pub 
lished  a  burlesque  epic  with  the  title  of  M'Fingal,  which 
he  expanded  into  four  cantos  in  1782.  It  was  a  vigorous 
satire  upon  the  Tories,  and  proved  a  powerful  support  to  the 
Revolution  in  that  divided  age,  running  to  thirty  editions. 
In  outward  form  it  was  modelled  pretty  closely  after  Butler's 
Hudibras,  the  famous  English  satire  upon  the  Puritans.  Bom 
bast,  coarse  wit,  a  lilting  measure,  and  bad  double  rhymes  are 
almost  necessary  ingredients  of  a  poem  whose  hero,  Squire 
M'Fingal,  "the  vilest  Tory  in  the  town,"  is  tried,  condemned, 
tied  to  a  pole,  tarred,  and  subjected  to  a  shower  of  down  until 

"Not  Milton's  six-wing'd  angel  gathers 
Such  superfluity  of  feathers." 

Unquestionably  the  best  ballad  of  the  time  that  has  come 
down  to  us  is  an  anonymous  production,  Hale  in  the  Bush, 
composed  in  memory  of  the  fate  of  young  Nathan  Hale,  who 
was  executed  as  a  spy  in  September,  1776. 

"The  breezes  went  steadily  through  the  tall  pines 

A  saying  'oh  hu-ush!'  a  saying  'oh  hu-ush!' 
As  stilly  stole  by  a  bold  legion  of  horse, 

For  Hale  in  the  bush,  for  Hale  in  the  bush.'* 

The  haunting  quality  of  this  opening  stanza  will  be  readily 
felt,  and  the  entire  poem  is  much  superior  to  the  earliest 
recorded  and  once  famous  American  ballad  of  LovewelVs 
Fight  (composed  about  1725).  In  point  of  popularity, 


44  THE   REVOLUTIONARY   PERIOD 

however,  there  was  nothing  among  Revolutionary  ballads  to 
compete  with  the  humorous  Battle  of  the  Kegs — kags,  the  word 
must  have  been  pronounced,  if  rhyming  it  with  bags  be 
trustworthy  evidence.  It  was  written  in  1778  by  Francis 
Hopkinson,  a  Philadelphia  lawyer  and  signer  of  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  and  father  of  the  writer  of  Hail 
Columbia.  Some  kegs  filled  with  powder  and  provided  with 
a  lighted  fuse  had  been  sent  floating  down  among  the  British 
ships  at  Philadelphia  and  were  promptly  fired  upon  "with 
amazing  courage." 

"The  kegs,  'tis  said,  tho'  strongly  made 

Of  rebel  staves  and  hoops,  Sir, 
Could  not  oppose  their  powerful  foes, 
The  conquering  British  troops,  Sir." 

All  this  popular  verse  barely  escapes  being  dismissed  as 
doggerel.  The  kind  of  height  to  which  it  could  rise  may  be 
illustrated,  perhaps,  by  one  final  example  from  Joel  Barlow's 
Hasty  Pudding.  Barlow,  like  Dwight  and  Trumbull,  was  a 
Yale  man  of  poetic  proclivities,  and  in  1793,  while  he  was 
abroad  in  Savoy,  a  dish  of  savory  polenta  stirred  the  memories 
of  his  palate  and  provoked  his  muse : 

"I  sing  the  sweets  I  know,  the  charms  I  feel, 
My  morning  incense,  and  my  evening  meal, 
The  sweets  of  Hasty  Pudding.     Come,  dear  bowl, 
Glide  o'er  my  palate,  and  inspire  my  soul. 
The  milk  beside  thee,  smoking  from  the  kine, 
Its  substance  mingled,  married  in  with  thine, 
Shall  cool  and  temper  thy  superior  heat 
And  save  the  pains  of  blowing  while  I  eat." 

He  dedicated  the  poem,  which  was  published  in  1796,  to  Mrs. 
Washington,  without  any  fear  that  the  "first  lady  of  the  land" 
might  be  above  taking  interest  in  the  homely  concerns  of  a 
housewife. 


POETRY  45 

There  were  more  serious  attempts  at  poetry  than  these — 
some,  indeed,  most  serious.  Dr.  Dwight,  of  Columbia  fame, 

tried  his  hand  at  an  epic  in  eleven  books  and  ten 
vers°e.c  thousand  lines,  The  Conquest  of  Canaan  (1785); 

and  Joel  Barlow  wrote  a  Vision  of  Columbus  (1787) 
which  was  afterwards  expanded  into  the  ten  books  of  The 
Columbiad  (1807).  But  in  both  style  and  spirit  these  poems 
were  weakly  imitative  of  a  school  of  English  poetry  already 
defunct.  The  curse  of  conventionality  is  over  them.  War 
riors,  for  example,  are  never  said  to  come  to  swords'  points, 
but  one  hero  on  another  "pours  the  tempest  of  resistless  war." 
If  the  night  is  bright,  the  moon  is  "sole  empress  on  her  silver 
throne";  if  dark,  a  cloud  "involves  the  moon  and  wraps  the 
world  in  shade."  Perhaps  no  American  poem  has  aspired 
higher  or  fallen  lower  than  The  Columbiad,  which  at  the  very 
outset  challenges  comparison  with  the  Iliad  and  the  Aeneid: 

"I  sing  the  mariner  who  first  unfurled 
An  eastern  banner  o'er  the  western  world, 
And  taught  mankind  where  future  empires  lay 
In  these  fair  confines  of  descending  day." 

And  the  poem  proceeds,  in  ponderous  fashion,  to  uphold 
juster  ideas  of  honor  than  those  of  old  Homer,  whose  exis 
tence,  the  author  stoutly  maintained,  "had  proved  one  of  the 
signal  misfortunes  of  mankind."  Barlow's  purpose  was  good. 
"This,"  he  declared,  "is  the  moment  in  America  to  give  such 
a  direction  to  poetry,  painting,  and  the  other  fine  arts,  that 
true  and  useful  ideas  of  glory  may  be  implanted  in  the  minds 
of  men."  But  the  poetry  was  not  good,  and  the  minds  of  men 
refused  to  take  kindly  to  such  implanting.  Epics  have  not 
flourished  on  American  soil. 

There  was,  however,  one  American  who  before  1800 
produced  poetry  that  can  still  be  read  for  its  own  sake.  This 
was  Philip  Freneau.  Freneau  was  born  at  New  York  in 


40  THE    REVOLUTIONARY   PERIOD 

1752,  of  a  family  that  had  originally  been  French  Protestant 
refugees.  He  was  graduated  from  Princeton  several  years 
Phiii  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolutionary  War 

Freneau,        and  immediately  entered  upon  an  active  and  varied 

1752-1832. 

career,  becoming  journalist,  editor,  trader,  sea- 
captain,  and  government  clerk  by  turns.  His  voyages  took 
him  to  the  Madeiras  and  the  West  Indies;  and  at  one  time  he 
suffered  the  horrors  of  imprisonment  on  a  British  prison-ship 
at  New  York.  He  was  still  a  hale  man  of  eighty  when, 
having  set  out  one  December  evening  to  walk  to  his  home, 
about  two  miles  from  Monmouth,  New  Jersey,  he  lost  his 
way  in  a  violent  snow-storm  and  perished. 

Freneau  was  best  known  in  his  own  day  as  a  "patriot 
poet,"  having  contributed  to  the  newspapers,  especially  dur 
ing  the  war,  numerous  occasional  verses  inspired  by  his 
hatred  of  the  British  and  the  royalists.  The  character  of 
these,  as  of  a  whole  flood  of  similar  verse  of  the  time,  may  be 
judged  from  the  opening  lines  of  A  Prophecy  (1782) : 

"  When  a  certain  great  king,  whose  initial  is  G, 
Shall  force  stamps  upon  paper  and  folks  to  drink  tea; 
When  these  folks  burn  his  tea  and  stampt  paper  like  stubble, 
You  may  guess  that  this  king  is  then  coming  to  trouble. 

But  when  B  and  C  with  their  armies  are  taken, 
This  king  will  do  well  if  he  saves  his  own  bacon. 
In  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  eighty  and  two, 
A  stroke  he  shall  get  that  will  make  him  look  blue; 
In  the  years  eighty-three,  eighty-four,  eighty-five, 
You  hardly  shall  know  that  the  king  is  alive; 
In  the  year  eighty-six  the  affair  will  be  over, 
And  he  shall  eat  turnips  that  grow  in  Hanover." 

These  verses,  though  rather  above  the  average  of  the  age, 
are  still  only  such  as  we  might  expect  from  a  man  of  Freneau's 
restless  and  adventuresome  spirit,  and  were  probably  written 


POETRY  47 

with  a  galloping  pen.  They  have  long  since  become  obsolete. 
But  in  calmer  moods  Freneau  produced  work  of  more  lasting 
qualities.  A  few  of  his  poems  deal  with  native  American 
scenes  and  themes,  and  two  or  three  among  these,  such  as 
Eutaw  Springs*  and  The  Indian  Bury  ing -Ground,  are  usually 
selected  as  examples  of  his  poetic  genius  at  its  best.  Scott 
gave  testimony  to  his  appreciation  of  the  former  by  adopting, 
with  a  slight  change,  one  of  its  lines  for  his  Marmion  (Intro 
duction  to  Canto  III.). — 

"And  took  the  spear,  but  left  the  shield;" 

while  Campbell  borrowed  for  his  O'Connor's  Child  the  fine 
fancy  at  the  close  of  the  following  stanza  from  The  Indian 
B  urying-Ground: 

"By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues, 

The  hunter  and  the  deer — a  shade." 

Freneau's  most  ambitious  poem  is  The  House  of  Night, 
written  while  he  was  in  Jamaica,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four. 
It  is  grimly  imaginative,  and  possibly,  in  places,  foreshadows 
the  genius  of  Poe,  but  it  is  a  very  uneven  production  and  has 
been  overpraised.  Far  better  is  the  little  lyric  of  four 
stanzas,  The  Wild  Honeysuckle  (Poems,  1795),  in  which  this 
native  flower  is  apostrophized  in  all  its  modest,  evanescent 
beauty : 

"Fair  flower,  that  dost  so  comely  grow, 

Hid  in  this  silent,  dull  retreat, 
Untouched  thy  honeyed  blossoms  blow, 

Unseen  thy  little  branches  greet; 
No  roving  foot  shall  find  thee  here, 

No  busy  hand  provoke  a  tear. 


*  Freneau's  title  was  "To  the  Memory  of  the  Brave  Americans,  under  General  Greene, 
who  Fell  in  the  Action  of  September  8,  1781." 


48  THE   REVOLUTIONARY   PERIOD 

"  From  morning  suns  and  evening  dews 

At  first  thy  little  being  came; 
If  nothing  once,  you  nothing  lose, 

For  when  you  die  you  are  the  same; 
The  space  between  is  but  an  hour, 

The  frail  duration  of  a  flower." 

Most  critics  have  cared  to  remember  of  Freneau  only  this 
one  lyric,  but  he  essayed  another  and  rather  more  difficult 
kind  of  verse  with  such  success  that  it  should  not  be  over 
looked.  This  is  "social  verse," — a  somewhat  inexact  and 
general  term  for  various  kinds  of  sentimental  effusions  that 
are  light  without  levity  and  grave  without  gravity,  that,  in 
other  words,  range  freely  all  the  way  from  laughter  to  tears 
without  quite  touching  upon  either.  Freneau  could  write  a 
most  pathetic  tribute  To  the  Dog  Sancho  who  nearly  lost  his 
life  defending  his  master's  cabin  against  midnight  robbers; 
or  he  could  compose  a  graceful  ditty  on  A  Lady's  Singing 
Bird.,  or  on  Pewter  Platter  Alley:  but  his  best  efforts  in  this 
direction  are  distinctly  bacchanalian,  celebrating  the 
praises  of  wine  and  the  joys  of  tavern  life.  The  Parting 
Glass,  On  the  Ruins  of  a  Country  Inn,  To  a  Honey 
Bee,  are  poems  that  should  not  be  allowed  to  drop  out 
of  our  anthologies,  all  the  more  because  we  have  so  few 
of  the  kind.  The  last  named  is  especially  happy.  The 
tippler  addresses  a  wandering  bee  that  has  alighted  on 
his  glass: 

"  Welcome! —  I  hail  you  to  my  glass; 

All  welcome  here  you  find; 

Here  let  the  cloud  of  trouble  pass, 

Here  be  all  care  resigned. 

This  fluid  never  fails  to  please, 

And  drown  the  griefs  of  men  or  bees." 

But  the  bee  finally  succeeds  in  drowning  itself  as  well  as  its 
griefs: 


POETRY  49 

"Do  as  you  please,  your  will  is  mine; 

Enjoy  it  without  fear 
And  your  grave  will  be  this  glass  of  wine, 
Your  epitaph  —  a  tear. 

Go,  take  your  seat  in  Charon's  boat; 
We'll  tell  the  hive,  you  died  afloat." 

William  Clifton,  a  young  Philadelphian  of  promise  who 
died  in  1799,  also  produced  a  few  occasional  poems,  which 

were  published  in  1800,  the  best  one  of  which — 
Occasional  a  bit  of  melodious  social  verse  with  the  refrain  of 

"Friendship,  Love,  Wine,  and  a  Song" — scarcely 
suffers  by  comparison  with  the  lyrics  of  Freneau.  And 
in  1780,  while  the  result  of  the  Revolution  still  hung  in  the 
balance,  there  appeared  an  anonymous  drinking  song  with 
a  strong  patriotic  ring,  The  Volunteer  Boys,  of  which  it  seems 
worth  while  to  preserve  still  an  echo,  if  only  that  we  may 
catch  at  this  distance  a  little  of  the  spirit  of  our  forefathers : 

'  Hence  with  the  lover  who  sighs  o  'er  his  wine, 

Chloes  and  Phillises  toasting; 

Hence  with  the  slave  who  will  whimper  and  whine, 
Of  ardour  and  constancy  boasting; 
Hence  with  love's  joys, 
Follies  and  noise, — 
The  toast  that  I  give  is  the  Volunteer  Boys." 

From  this  time  on  the  echoes  of  the  Revolution  grew 
rapidly  more  and  more  faint,  and  though  they  did  not  cease 
until  well  into  the  next  century,  we  shall  find,  when  we  take 
up  the  thread  of  poetry  again,  that  the  character  of  the  poetry 
was  materially  changed. 


PART  II 

THE  CREATIVE  IMPULSE 

FROM  MAINE  TO  GEORGIA 
1800-1860 


THE   CREATIVE   IMPULSE 

INDEPENDENCE  was  won.  A  federal  constitution  had 
been  adopted  and  a  government  organized  under  its  pro 
visions.  By  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
capital  had  been  permanently  fixed  at  Washington,  a  second 
president  had  quietly  given  way  to  a  third  of  a  different 
party,  and  the  United  States  were  a  political  fact  to  be  reck 
oned  with  in  the  councils  of  nations.  It  remained  for  them 
to  prove  themselves  worthy  of  the  position  they  held,  and  to 
carry  on  in  America  the  work  of  European  civilization  and 
culture.  Foreign  trade  existed  of  course — in  ten  years  the 
exports  had  increased  from  twenty  to  seventy  millions  of 
dollars;  here  and  there,  too,  a  man  of  an  investigating  and 
inventive  turn  of  mind,  like  Benjamin  Franklin,  had  con 
tributed  something  to  the  practical  knowledge  of  mankind; 
but  in  that  higher  kind  of  commerce  of  which  trade  reviews 
and  public  records  take  little  note,  the  New  World  had  as  yet 
given  really  nothing  in  exchange  for  what  it  received.  W^ould 
it  ever  have  anything  to  give?  European  critics  of  art  and 
literature  dared  to  ask  the  question,  for  it  was  a  not  uncom 
mon  belief  in  Europe  that,  as  Irving  humorously  put  it,  ''all  ani 
mals  degenerated  in  America,  and  man  among  the  number." 

The  answer  to  their  question  did  not  come  at  once — it  is 
not  even  yet  such  as  we  should  like  to  make — but  it  came. 
The  cause  of  popular  education,  so  cherished  by  the  Ameri 
cans  from  the  first,  was  taken  up  with  new  zeal.  Noah 
Webster's  famous  Speller  appeared  in  1783,  Lindley  Murray's 
English  Grammar  in  1795,  and  Webster's  Compendious 
Dictionary  in  1806.  And  in  literature  proper,  the  creative 
impulse  was  plainly  asserting  itself.  From  the  beginning  of 
the  century,  when  Charles  Brockden  Brown  of  Philadelphia 
deliberately  took  up  the  profession  of  letters,  there  was  a  con- 

53 


54  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

scious  awakening  of  literary  activity.  The  manifestations  of 
that  activity  were  most  marked  in  New  York,  and  that  city, 
within  ten  years,  had  among  her  ninety  thousand  inhabitants 
an  author — Irving — who  was  destined  to  win  for  American 
letters  some  recognition  in  the  literary  circles  of  Europe. 

Still,  progress  was  slow.  For  after  the  decade  that  passed 
between  Brown's  first  novel  in  1798  and  Irving's  Knicker 
bocker  History  in  1809,  it  was  almost  another  decade  before 
there  was  anything  worth  adding  to  the  record.  Then,  in 
1817,  came  Bryant's  Thanatopsis;  in  1818,  Paulding's  Back 
woodsman;  in  1819,  the  poems  of  Drake  and  Halleck;  in  1819, 
1820,  Irving's  Sketch-Book;  in  1821,  Cooper's  Spy.  Ten  years 
more  found  some  of  these  writers  distinguished.  In  1852 
Bryant,  then  editor  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  was 
bringing  out  his  second  volume  of  poems,  Cooper's  tales  were 
being  widely  translated  in  Europe,  and  Irving  was  at  length 
come  back  from  his  seventeen  years'  residence  abroad  to 
receive  the  highest  honors  from  his  countrymen.  By  that 
time,  too,  Longfellow,  Poe,  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Whittier, 
Holmes,  and  Lowell  were  either  appearing  or  soon  to  appear 
above  the  literary  horizon.  Another  thirty  years  and  the 
United  States  had  a  respectable  body  of  national  literature, 
that  body  of  literature  which,  as  wre  said  at  the  outset,  has 
now  become  classic. 

We  need  not  deceive  ourselves  as  to  its  relative  im 
portance.  America  has  no  world-names,  no  literature  or  art 
that  are  secure  in  the  sense  in  which  Plato  and  Shakespeare, 
the  Iliad  and  the  Song  of  Solomon,  the  Parthenon  and  the 
Laokoon,  are  secure.  But  the  United  States  have  built  up  a 
nationality  through  years  of  trial  and  heroic  endeavor,  and 
have  brought  forth  men  spiritually  gifted  to  tell  the  story.  It 
is  the  record  of  those  years,  sixty  or  seventy  roundly  speaking, 
years  in  which,  said  Cooper,  the  nation  was  passing  from  the 
gristle  into  the  bone,  that  we  now  purpose  to  review  in  detail. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    NEW    ENVIRONMENT.— BROWN,    IRVING,     COOPER, 

BRYANT 

To  the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States  of  one  hundred 
years  ago,  the  New  World  was  in  some  respects  quite  as  old  as 
it  is  to  us.  It  had  always  been  their  home  and  their  fathers' 
home.  It  had  a  continuous  history  of  two  hundred  years,  and 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers  were  as  remote  to  Irving  and  Bryant  as 
Cotton  Mather  is  to  us — that  is,  if  we  measure  by  time  alone. 
But  if  we  measure  by  achievements,  we  must  alter  our  per 
spective.  In  its  unexplored  area,  its  untamed  natives,  its 
undeveloped  resources,  the  country  was  still  new,  and  it  was 
consciously  so.  It  was  new,  too,  in  its  dearth  of  art  and 
literature.  The  ocean  and  the  wilderness,  the  motley- 
peopled  sea-ports,  the  vast  lakes,  the  pine  forests,  the 
stubborn  New  England  soil  and  climate,  the  little  log  school- 
house,  the  quaint  Dutch  burgher,  the  southern  planter,  the 
prowling  Indian,  were  all  accepted  in  a  matter-of-fact  spirit, 
and  scarcely  a  poet  or  painter  had  looked  upon  them  yet  with 
an  imaginative  eye.  Two  centuries  of  the  primitive,  heroic 
age  of  America  had  already  passed,  and  there  was  no  epic 
song.  But,  at  last,  in  the  peace  of  established  nationhood, 
the  new  environment,  so  fast  becoming  old,  was  yielding  its 
inspiration  to  native  art. 

CHARLES   BROCKDEN  BROWN,   1771-1810 

Philip  Freneau  failed  to  follow  up  worthily  in  days  of 
peace  the  gift  which  he  had  exercised  in  more  eventful  times, 
and  he  had  no  contemporary  of  similar  gifts;  poetry  lay 
dormant.  The  new  impulse  was  to  be  felt  first  in  prose, — 
as  it  chanced,  in  prose  fiction,  a  form  of  art  thai?  was  being 

55 


56  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

rapidly  developed  in  England.  That  novels  had  been  in  free 
circulation  in  America  for  some  time  is  attested  by  Noah 
Webster,  who,  in  an  essay  on  woman's  education,  written 
about  1790,  complained  that  "a  hundred  volumes  of  modern 
novels  may  be  read  without  acquiring  a  new  idea."  They 
must  have  been  the  products  of  English  pens.  Of  American 
writers  in  this  field  during  the  eighteenth  century,  one  might 
almost  say  that  the  names  of  but  two  are  remembered — 
Mrs.  Susanna  Rowson  and  Mrs.  Tabitha  Tenney;  and  their 
numerous  novels  may  be  dismissed  as  unworthy  of  record, 
though  one  of  Mrs.  Rowson 's,  Charlotte  Temple,  a  crude 
hysterical  production  published  in  1790  (declared,  by  the 
way,  to  be  "a  tale  of  truth"),  may  still  be  found  in  pamphlet 
issues  and  doubtless  has  still  some  power  of  drawing  tears. 
The  year  1798,  however,  marked  the  advent  of  a  romancer 
of  somewhat  more  than  passing  worth — Charles  Brockden 
Brown. 

Brown  was  born  at  Philadelphia  in  1771  and  died  there  in 
1810.  Sickly  in  body  from  childhood,  he  somewhat  illogic- 
ally  determined  to  devote  his  energy  to  the  culti 
vation  of  his  mind.  He  became  a  diligent  student 
of  language  and  literature,  laboring  to  make  himself  a  master 
of  style,  and,  after  some  dallying  with  the  law,  adopted  the 
profession  of  letters  outright — the  first  man  in  America  to 
take  such  a  step  and  succeed  well  enough  to  be  remembered 
for  it.  Though  he  came  of  a  Quaker  family,  he  held  very 
liberal  views:  his  first  publication,  Alcuin  (1797),  was  a 
dialogue  on  the  rights  of  women.  His  sensitive  and  imagi 
native  temperament  was  one  to  respond  quickly  to  the 
extravagances  of  an  age  of  revolutionary  ardors  and  aspira 
tions,  an  age  which  produced  Shelley  s  and  "iridescent 
dreams."  Brown's  nature,  however,  was  not  long  in  finding 
the  proper,  field  of  its  activity  in  fiction.  In  the  brief  space 
of  four  years,  from  1798  to  1801,  he  published  six  novels, 


BROCKDEN    BROWN  57 

or  romances,*  of  considerable  length.  But  with  this  outburst 
his  creative  power  seems  to  have  exhausted  itself,  for  he 
devoted  the  remainder  of  his  short  life  to  journalism. 

Brown  had  much  talent  and  some  of  the  marks  of  genius, 

and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  if  he  had  lived  at  a  later 

period   in  the   development   of  fiction   and  had 

Character         ,  .  ,  ,  ,  , 

of  his  been  given  a  stronger  constitution,  he  would  nave 

Works.  &  .  .        .       .        ,  . 

produced  work  ot  a  nigh  order.  As  it  is,  his 
Wieland,  Arthur  Mervyn,  Edgar  Huntly,  and  the  rest,  can 
command  only  a  qualified  praise.  Their  strength  is  great, 
but  their  weakness  is  greater,  and  while  there  will  always  be 
some  to  read  them  with  an  interest  mounting  to  absorption, 
most  people  will  be  repelled  by  the  sheer  horror  of  their 
themes  and  their  grave  offences  against  literary  art.  To 
begin  with,  they  are  written  in  a  strange  style,  at  once  nervous 
and  stilted.  The  sentences  are  short,  hammering,  and  mo 
notonous, — quite  unlike  the  elaborate  and  carefully  modu 
lated  sentences  affected  by  the  political  orators  and  essayists 
of  the  time.  The  phrases,  on  the  contrary,  are  roundabout, 
and  the  words  are  the  same  long  Latin  derivatives  that  the 
lawyers  and  the  statesmen  indulged  in.  The  result  is  a 
peculiar  compound  of  abruptness  and  formalism.  For 
example,  the  first  three  paragraphs  of  Wieland  open  thus: 
"I  feel  little  reluctance  in  complying  with  your  request "- 
"My  state  is  not  destitute  of  tranquillity" — "I  address  no 


*  It  is  well  to  use  these  names  carefully.  Fiction  is  a  general  term  for  imaginative  prose. 
Tale  is  an  old  word,  once  applied  to  almost  any  kind  of  story,  true  or  false.  It  is  now  chiefly 
limited  to  stories  of  adventure,  stories  in  which  the  interest  lies  in  the  events.  A  romance  is 
a  kind  of  elaborated  and  heightened  tale,  drawing  its  interest  largely  from  the  picturesque, 
the  marvellous,  the  supernatural.  The  novel,  of  later  development,  aims  to  keep  more  closely 
to  actual  or  possible  life,  and  to  portray  character  as  affecting  or  affected  by  circumstances. 
The  short  story  corresponds  to  the  novel  somewhat  as  the  tale  does  to  the  romance,  in  being 
less  elaborate.  All  the  terms  overlap,  however,  tale  and  romance  in  particular  being  still  often 
used  interchangeably;  and  even  though  we  keep  the  definitions  distinct,  any  particular  story 
is  likely  to  have  characteristics  of  both  tale  and  romance,  or  of  both  romance  and  novel. 
Brown's  stories  may  very  properly  be  called  either  romances  or  novels. 


58  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

supplication  to  the  Deity."  Modern  prose  would  prefer  to 
say:  "I  am  quite  willing  to  do  as  you  wish" — "I  have  mo 
ments  of  peace" — "I  make  no  prayers  to  God."  In  another 
place  the  revival  of  hope  is  described  as  "the  re-exaltation  of 
that  luminary  of  whose  effulgencies  I  had  so  long  and  so 
liberally  partaken."  Certainly  no  critic  in  Brown's  day 
would  have  found  this  style  offensive,  and  the  poet  Shelley, 
it  may  be  said,  read  the  tales  with  eagerness;  but  it  is  impos 
sible  for  readers  today  not  to  be  very  differently  moved. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  exaggerated  sentimentalism 
of  the  tales.  Sentimentalism  was  characteristic  of  the  fiction 
just  then  popular  in  England,  from  Mackenzie's  Man  of 
Feeling  to  Godwin's  Caleb  Williams,  the  most  widely  read 
novel  of  the  time.  Brown  revels  in  situations  that  call  for 
display  of  feeling,  especially  of  the  so-called  tender  emotions ; 
and  such  phrases  as  "extreme  sensibility,"  "impressionable 
nature,"  "tears  of  delicious  sympathy,"  "agony  of  fondness," 
"effusions  of  gratitude,"  "paroxysms  of  grief,"  sprinkle 
his  pages. 

But  the  most  striking  feature  of  the  stories  is  the  machin 
ery  of  mystery  and  terror  which  supports  the  plot.  This, 
too,  had  its  English  model  in  the  "Gothic"  romances  of  the 
time,  of  which  Horace  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otranto  and  Mrs. 
Radcliffe's  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  are  famous  examples. 
Secret  passages,  sliding  panels,  unearthly  voices,  midnight 
murders,  and  vanishing  trails  tend  to  keep  the  reader  in  a 
creepy  state  of  body  and  mind.  Of  course  these  are  good 
romantic  devices;  only  Brown,  true  to  his  "advanced"  ideas, 
would  not  allow  them  to  stand  frankly  on  their  emotional 
and  artistic  value.  He  felt  obliged  to  support  every  fancy  by 
a  fact,  attested  in  a  foot-note  if  need  be,  and  to  find  a  natural 
explanation  for  his  wildest  absurdities.  Thus  he  drags  in 
the  phenomena  of  sleep-walking,  mental  hallucination,  and 
the  like.  The  effect  is  not  what  he  calculated,  for  his  plots 


BROCKDEN    BROWN  59 

are  made  only  the  more  absurd  and  trivial.  He  failed  to 
understand  that  the  imagination  will  accept  the  impossible 
but  resents  the  improbable.  Thus  by  straining  probability 
and  allowing  momentous  events  to  turn  upon  light  causes,  he 
weakens  the  reader's  interest  and  makes  him  critical.  In 
Wieland,  for  example,  Theodore  Wieland,  a  religious  fanatic, 
murders  his  wife  and  children  at  the  bidding  of  certain 
"divine  voices."  The  voices  turn  out  to  be  merely  the  trick 
of  a  scoundrelly  ventriloquist.  That  such  a  thing  might 
happen,  no  one  will  deny,  but  it  is  extremely  improbable; 
and  if  it  did  happen,  we  should  expect  to  find  the  account 
of  it  among  the  items  of  a  sensational  newspaper,  and  not  in  a 
romance  written  for  our  edification. 

It  is  impossible  to  illustrate  these  things  fully  here,  but 
some  idea  of  Brown's  style,  as  well  as  of  his  predilection  for 
gruesome  themes  may  be  obtained  from  the  following  extract. 
It  is  the  beginning  of  the  famous  description,  in  Arthur 
Mervyn,  of  the  yellow  fever  epidemic  at  Philadelphia  in  1793, 
which  he  himself  had  witnessed  and  suffered  from: 

"The  sun  had  nearly  set  before  I  reached  the  precincts  of  the  city. 
I  pursued  the  track  which  I  had  formerly  taken,  and  entered  High  Street 
after  nightfall.  Instead  of  equipages  and  a  throng  of  passengers,  the 
voice  of  levity  and  glee,  which  I  had  formerly  observed,  and  which  the 
mildness  of  the  season  would,  at  other  times,  have  produced,  I  found 
nothing  but  a  dreary  solitude. 

"The  market-place,  and  each  side  of  this  magnificent  avenue,  were 
illuminated,  as  before,  by  lamps;  but  between  the  verge  of  Schuylkill  and 
the  heart  of  the  city  I  met  not  more  than  a  dozen  figures;  and  these  were 
ghostlike,  wrapped  in  cloaks,  from  behind  which  they  cast  upon  me 
glances  of  wonder  and  suspicion,  and,  as  I  approached,  changed  their 
course,  to  avoid  touching  me.  Their  clothes  were  sprinkled  with  vinegar 
and  their  nostrils  defended  from  contagion  by  some  powerful  perfume. 

"I  cast  a  look  upon  the  houses,  which  I  reconnected  to  have  form 
erly  been,  at  this  hour,  brilliant  with  lights,  resounding  with  lively 
voices,  and  thronged  with  busy  faces.  Now  they  were  closed,  above 
and  below;  dark,  and  without  tokens  of  being  inhabited.  From  the 


60  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

upper  windows  of  some,  a  gleam  sometimes  fell  upon  the  pavement  I 
was  traversing,  and  showed  that  their  tenants  had  not  fled,  but  were 
secluded  or  disabled. 

"These  tokens  were  new,  and  awakened  all  my  panics.  Death 
seemed  to  hover  over  this  scene,  and  I  dreaded  that  the  floating  pes 
tilence  had  already  lighted  on  my  frame." 

This  is  excellent  in  its  kind,  and  the  audacious  realism  of 
the  passages  that  follow  fairly  takes  one's  breath,  almost 
challenging  comparison  with  similar  passages  in  Boccaccio, 
Manzoni,  or  Defoe.  But  the  kind  is  morbid,  even  though  the 
artist's  hand  is  strong  enough  to  keep  him  clear  of  the  hys 
terical.  And  in  the  case  of  Brown's  work  the  psychological 
analysis  that  attends  it  all  makes  the  matter  worse.  There  is 
endless  deliberation  without  action,  wearisome  pausing  to 
portray  every  slightest  phase  of  every  fleeting  sensation. 
Nor  is  there  any  touch  of  humor  to  relieve  the  prevailing 
gloom. 

One  thing  in  this  work  is  to  be  praised  without  reserve. 
Notwithstanding  his  adherence  to  the  methods  of  the  British 
novelists,  Brown  had  the  courage  to  give  his  stories  always  a 
New  World  background,  now  the  city  of  Philadelphia  or  of 
Baltimore,  now  the  wilds  of  the  Pennsylvania  forests.  The 
suburban  villas  with  their  avenues  of  catalpas,  the  settler's 
clay-plastered  log  cabin  and  square  acre  of  clearing  tilled 
with  the  hoe,  the  panther  in  his  cave,  the  Indian  with  his 
tomahawk, — these  are  living  pictures  out  of  a  century 
that  is  gone  and  are  worth  many  volumes  of  sentimental 
scenes.  Here  indeed  Brown  wTas  a  pioneer,  and  in  this 
reliance  upon  local  color  he  anticipates  Cooper,  just  as  in 
psychological  analysis  he  anticipates  Poe  and  Hawthorne, 
and  in  unshrinking  realism  the  writers  of  a  modern  French 
school.  For  the  rest,  his  romances  are  instructive  more  as 
examples  of  what  other  romancers  should  avoid  than  of  what 
they  should  imitate.  He  did  not  have  Scott  or  Hawthorne 


MPNOR   EARLY   FICTION  61 

to  teach  him.  He  belonged  to  the  experimental  period  of 
English  fiction,  and  he  suffered  the  common  fate  that  attends 
early  experiments. 

MINOR  EARLY  FICTION 

Brown's  early  devotion  to  romantic  fiction  was  shortlived, 
and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  communicated  the  impulse, 
genuine  as  it  was,  to  any  worthy  contemporary  or  successor. 
His  only  contemporaries,  indeed,  were  such  as  the  negligible 
Mrs.  Rowson  and  Mrs.  Tenney  afore-mentioned;  and  those 
who  followed  him  after  an  interval  of  nearly  twenty  years 
were,  with  the  shining  exceptions  of  Irving  and  Cooper,  little 
more  important.  Yet  a  few  of  these  latter  need  mention. 

John  Neal,  of  Maine,  began  in  1817  a  long  and  industrious 
literary  career,  and  his  scores  of  novels  (Logan,  1821;  Seventy- 
Six,  1822;  The  Down-Easters,  1833)  portray  in  a 
1793*1876!'  vigorous,  if  somewhat  erratic  fashion,  certain 
phases  of  American  life.  But  Neal,  who  boasted 
of  writing  three  volumes  in  twenty-seven  days,  "did  not 
pretend  to  write  English,"  and  though  Hawthorne  could 
enjoy  the  "ranting  stuff"  in  his  youth,  literature  takes  little 
account  of  it.  Farther  south,  amid  the  picturesque  Berkshire 
hills  of  Massachusetts,  once  the  scene  of  Jonathan  Edwards's 
Catherine  missionary  labors  among  the  Indians,  Miss  Sedg- 
sedrgwick,  wick,  a  school-teacher,  made  a  similar  but  more 
1789-1867.  successful  effort  toward  creating  a  native  fiction, 
weaving  her  local  surroundings  and  reminiscences  into 
two- volume  novels  that  had  considerable  vogue  in  their  day. 
A  New  England  Tale  (1822),  Redwood  (1824),  Hope  Leslie 
(1827),  and  The  Linwoods  (1835),  are  at  once  sermons  on  the 
moral  and  domestic  virtues,  and  faithful  pictures  of  New 
England  homestead  life  in  the  days  when  the  Mohawk  was 
still  a  menace  to  the  white  man's  security. 


62  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

A  more  important  figure  than  either  of  the  preceding  was 

James  Kirke  Paulding,  who  belonged  to  the  region  of  the 

Dutch  settlements  about  New  York  and  who  was  himself 

probably  a  descendant  of  a  Dutch  family.     A  city  politician 

and  "man  about  town,"  he  had  a  facile  pen  and 

James  Kirke  .        •  •  •  ,  •  p  1-1 

Paulding,  spent  much  ol  its  energy  in  satire  ot  one  kind  or 
another,  now  growing  witty  or  caustic  over  the 
relations  between  John  Bull  and  Brother  Jonathan  (1812), 
now  parodying  Scott  (The  Lay  of  the  Scottish  Fiddle,  1813), 
and  now  burlesquing  Cooper.  His  earliest  work  consisted  of 
contributions  to  the  Salmagundi  papers  (1807),  in  the  publica 
tion  of  which  he  was  associated  with  his  friends,  the  Irving- 
brothers,  and  of  which  he  published  a  second  series  by  himself 
(1819,  1820).  His  best  work,  however,  is  to  be  sought  in 
his  more  serious  pictures  of  American  life  and  manners,  and 
though  his  Backwoodsman  (1818),  a  poem  of  three  thousand 
lines,  was  not  successful,  such  two- volume  novels  as  Konings- 
marke,  the  Long  Finne  (1823),  The  Dutchman's  Fireside  (1831), 
and  Westward  Ho!  (1832)  were.  The  first  of  these  deals  with 
the  Swedish  settlements  on  the  Delaware,  the  second  with  the 
Dutch  residents  along  the  Hudson,  and  the  third  with  life  in 
Virginia  and  Kentucky.  But  to  say  that  the  novels  were 
successful  is  not  to  give  them  high  praise.  Their  crudity 
may  be  judged  from  a  single  sentence  in  The  Dutchman's 
Fireside,  in  which  the  author,  after  picturing  the  overturning 
of  a  boat-load  of  picnickers  in  the  middle  of  a  stream,  naively 
tries  to  soften  the  pain  which  he  feels  obliged  to  cause  his 
readers :  "  It  is  with  sorrowful  emotions  I  record  that  the  acci 
dent  was  fatal  to  two  of  the  innocent  girls  and  one  of  the 
young  men,  who  sat  in  the  bow  of  the  boat."  The  characters 
are  often  caricatures,  the  humor  is  heavy,  the  pathos  is 
overdrawn,  and  the  author's  constant  preaching  against  the 
vices  of  an  age  of  machinery  and  money-getting  and  extrava 
gance  is  inappropriate  and  tedious.  Yet  the  books  are  not 


MINOR   EARLY   FICTION  63 

wholly  unreadable,  and  for  their  lively  pictures  of  the  Dutch 
man's  fireside  or  the  red  man's  lodge  they  deserve  a  humble 
place  by  the  works  of  Irving  and  Cooper. 

To  complete  this  brief  survey  of  a  fiction  that  at  the  begin 
ning  of  the  nineteenth  century  seemed  to  be  exploiting  the 
John  entire  country  almost  as  persistently  as  it  is  doing 

Kenned?!1  today,  the  name  of  John  Pendleton  Kennedy  of 
1795-1870.  Baltimore  may  be  added.  Kennedy,  like  Paulding 
was  a  public  man.  He  served  several  terms  in  Congress, 
and  late  in  life  was  appointed,  as  Paulding  had  been  before 
him,  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  Nor  were  his  writings  unlike 
those  of  his  northern  contemporary.  His  earliest  literary 
venture  was  the  Red  Book  (1818),  a  society  serial  similar  to 
Salmagundi,  published  in  association  with  another  Balti- 
morean.  Later,  he  turned  to  fiction,  and  in  1832  published 
Swallow  Barn,  his  best  known  work.  Its  plot  is  slight;  it  is 
valuable  chiefly  as  a  collection  of  sketches  of  manorial  life  in 
Virginia,  of  the  easy-going  days  and  ways  at  Swallow  Barn, 
"an  aristocratical  old  edifice  that  squats,  like  a  brooding  hen, 
on  the  southern  bank  of  the  James  River."  The  style,  in 
grace  and  genial  humor,  reminds  one  of  Irving,  to  whom  the 
book  was  dedicated.  In  his  other  works,  Horse-Shoe  Robin 
son,  a  Tale  of  the  Tory  Ascendency  (1835),  and  Rob  of  the  Bowl 
(1838),  the  author  went  back  to  revolutionary  and  colonial 
times,  still  laying  the  scenes  in  the  South.  It  has  sometimes 
been  said  that  Kennedy  wrote  the  fourth  chapter  of  the 
second  volume  of  Thackeray's  Virginians,  but  it  seems  more 
probable  that  he  only  furnished  Thackeray  with  some  ma 
terial  of  a  local  character  which  Thackeray's  knowledge  did 
not  enable  him  to  supply  himself. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  books  that  from  1815  onward  were 
published  and  advertised  by  the  side  of  Irving's  and  Cooper's. 
But  the  years  have  covered  them  with  increasing  neglect,  and 
we  must  turn  to  the  works  of  the  latter  writers  for  the  only 


64  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

permanent  record  of  the  romantic  tendencies  of  the  genera 
tion  before  Poe  and  Hawthorne. 

WASHINGTON  IRVING,  1783-1859 

It  seems  eminently  fitting  that  Irving,  the  oft-styled 
"Father  of  American  Letters," — a  very  human,  genial  father, 
too,  like  old  Chaucer  himself, — should  have  borne  the  name 
of  him  who,  by  a  clearer  title,  was  called  the  "Father  of  his 
Country."  He  was  born  at  New  York  in  1783,  the  year  of 
the  treaty  of  peace.  "Washington's  work  is  ended,"  said  his 
mother;  "the  child  shall  be  named  after  him."  And  the  child 
received  at  a  later  day  the  great  man's  blessing  and  lived  to 
be  his  biographer. 

New  York  had  then  fewer  than  thirty  thousand  inhabit 
ants  and  was  still  second  to  Philadelphia.  It  was  corn- 
Traits,  paratively  easy  for  the  city  boy  to  get  into  the 
country  and  thus  to  see  all  sides  of  American  life — 
commerce  and  agriculture,  art  and  nature,  society  and  soli 
tude.  Irving  himself  has  told  us  of  delightful  holiday 
afternoon  rambles,  and  of  long  excursions  up  the  Hudson, 
squirrel-shooting  and  angling  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  region  or 
drifting  lazily  past  the  Catskills.  The  love  of  the  open  air 
and  of  the  picturesque  always  clung  to  him,  and  in  one  of  his 
essays  on  England  he  declares  that  fondness  for  rural  life 
has  had  a  most  healthful  effect  upon  the  English  national 
character.  Still  he  was  essentially  a  city  boy,  with  a  city 
boy's  tastes  and  habits.  He  lounged  about  the  pier-heads,  or 
snatched  eagerly  at  chances  to  attend  the  theatre.  If  he  was 
fond  of  visiting  the  scenes  of  murders  and  robberies,  we  must 
attribute  it  in  part  to  his  surroundings  and  in  part  to  his 
active  imagination;  there  could  have  been  no  morbid  or 
depraved  instinct  back  of  it,  for  with  all  his  mischievousness 
he  had  a  noble  and  gentle  disposition. 

In  the  large  family  of  eleven  children,  of  whom  he  was  the 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 
CHARLES    BROCKDEN    BROWN 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 
WASHINGTON    IRVINO 


IRVING  65 

youngest,  his  social  nature  was  fully  developed,  and  as  he 
grew  up  he  took  more  and  more  delight  in  social  intercourse. 
He  entered  a  law  office,  but  its  regular  routine  had  few  charms 
for  him.  Instead  of  reading  law  he  read  literature,  and  he 
was  glad  at  all  times  to  escape  to  the  clubs,  the  theatres,  and 
the  drawing-rooms,  where  his  observations  furnished  him 
matter  for  the  exercise  of  his  pen  in  social  sketches  and  satir 
ical  squibs  to  be  printed  in  his  brother  Peter's  morning  news 
paper.  This  very  unacademic  education  received  a  proper 
finishing  touch  when,  in  1804,  his  brothers  sent  him  to 
Europe. 

Thereby  was  revealed  another  marked  trait.  He  went 
to  Europe  in  the  first  instance  for  his  health,  and  he  went 
again  later,  he  tells  us,  to  see  great  men,  though  that  is 
half  a  humorous  fling  at  European  contempt  of  America. 
But  it  is  clear  that  a  chief  attraction  was  always  the  charm  of 
Europe's  "storied  and  poetical  association."  The  romantic 
spirit  was  strong  in  him  and  it  early  took  the  form  of  a  love  of 
mediaeval  history  and  tradition.  "My  native  country  was 
full  of  youthful  promise:  Europe  was  rich  in  the  accumulated 
treasures  of  age."  And  even  as  he  sailed  up  the  river  Mersey, 
he  was  thrilled  by  catching  sight,  through  a  telescope,  of  "the 
mouldering  ruin  of  an  abbey  overrun  with  ivy." 

His  first  sojourn  in  Europe  lasted  nearly  two  years.  He 
returned  to  brighten  the  society  of  New  York  with  his  many 
personal  charms,  to  which  were  now  added  health 
writings.  and  the  polish  of  travel.  For  a  year  he  was 
associated  with  his  eldest  brother,  William, 
and  William's  brother-in-law,  James  Kirke  Paulding,  in  the 
publication  of  a  semi-monthly  periodical,  Salmagundi,  model 
led,  as  such  literary  enterprises  were  wont  to  be,  after  the 
Spectator.  He  seemed  to  be  aware  by  this  time  of  his  propen 
sity  toward  writing,  but  as  literature  was  not  a  promising 
profession  for  an  American,  he  persisted,  half-heartedly,  in 


66  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

looking  toward  the  law  and  politics.  However,  he  was  soon 
engaged  in  another  literary  enterprise.  With  his  brother 
Peter  he  had  planned  to  write  a  burlesque  history  of  New 
York  as  a  parody  upon  Dr.  Samuel  Mitchell's  pedantic 
Picture  of  New  York,  just  then  published,  when  Peter  was 
suddenly  called  to  Europe  and  the  work  was  left  in  the  hands 
of  Washington.  He  changed  the  scope  of  it  at  once,  condens 
ing  the  parody  into  five  introductory  chapters  and  continuing 
the  work  as  a  chronicle,  truthful  in  outline  but  still  burlesque 
in  spirit,  of  the  settlement  of  New  York  by  the  Dutch,  and  of 
the  reigns  of  the  early  Dutch  governors.  The  work  pur 
ported  to  have  been  written  by  an  eccentric  Dutch  antiquary, 
and  after  some  hoaxing  notices  in  the  newspaper  of  the 
mysterious  disappearance  of  the  author  and  the  discovery  of 
his  manuscript,  it  was  published  in  December,  1809,  as  A 
History  of  New  York,  by  Diedrich  Knickerbocker. 

No  one  could  have  been  more  surprised  than  Irving  at  the 

success  of  this  ''haphazard  production" — a  success  which  was 

both  immediate  and  lasting.     His  modesty  was 

"Knicker-  .  " 

bocker  quite   overwhelmed   with   the   attentions   he   re 

ceived.  He  had  furnished  readers  with  an  inex 
haustible  fund  of  wonder  and  amusement,  he  had  given 
America  a  genuine  American  book,  he  had  shown  New  York 
that  she  had  a  history  and  traditions,  and  he  had  fixed  a 
character  and  a  name  upon  a  quaint  but  worthy  and  influen 
tial  element  of  New  World  society.  Some  of  the  more 
prosaic  of  his  readers  of  Dutch  descent  could  not  enter  at 
once  into  the  humor  of  the  thing,  and  were  disposed  to 
resentment.  But  they  were  defenceless,  and  moreover 
Irving  had  written  so  wholly  without  malice  that  the  feeling 
speedily  wore  away.  The  Dutch  families  became  actually 
proud  to  acknowledge  themselves  Knickerbockers.  Irving 
has  a  good-natured  allusion  to  this  in  the  preface  to  "Rip 
Van  Winkle,"  wherein  he  says  that  the  good  Diedrich  was 


IRVING  67 

"apt  to  ride  his  hobby  his  own  way,  and  though  it  did  now 
and  then  kick  up  the  dust  a  little  in  the  eyes  of  his  neighbors, 
yet  his  errors  and  follies  are  remembered  'more  in  sorrow 
than  in  anger."  Indeed,  he  declared,  it  was  beginning  to 
seem  that  Diedrich  had  some  chance  for  immortality,  inas 
much  as  certain  biscuit-makers  were  imprinting  his  likeness 
on  their  New  Year  cakes. 

In  that  same  preface,  Irving  says  whimsically  of  the  liter 
ary  character  of  the  Knickerbocker  History  that  it  is  "not  a 
whit  better  than  it  should  be,"  adding  with  mock  gravity  that 
"its  chief  merit  is  its  scrupulous  accuracy,  and  it  is  now 
admitted  into  all  historical  collections  as  a  book  of  unques 
tionable  authority."  Of  course,  the  humor  of  the  book  is  its 
first  great  quality — a  humor  of  almost  epic  proportions, 
extending  from  mere  quips  and  puns  and  trivial  colloquialisms 
such  as  "jumping  out  of  one's  skin"  and  "keeping  up  the 
raw,"  to  the  entire  conception  of  the  "Dutch  dynasty" 
as  a  momentous  era  in  the  world's  history,  with  its  wars, 
its  councils,  its  successions,  its  downfall  and  extinction. 
We  read  here  of  how  the  benevolent  inhabitants  of  Europe 
introduced  among  the  savages  rum,  gin,  brandy,  and  the 
other  comforts  of  life,  of  how  the  town  of  New  Amsterdam 
arose  out  of  mud,  of  the  direful  feud  between  Ten  Breeches 
and  Tough  Breeches,  of  the  Pipe  Plot,  of  the  Mosquito  War, 
of  the  renowned  Wouter  van  Twiller,  who  was  exactly  five 
feet  six  inches  in  height  and  six  feet  five  inches  in  circum 
ference,  of  his  unparalleled  virtues  and  literally  unutterable 
wisdom,  of  how  he  fell  into  a  profound  doubt  and  finally 
evaporated,  of  how  William  the  Testy  grew  tough  in  propor 
tion  as  he  dried,  and  of  the  dignified  retirement  and  mortal 
surrender  of  Peter  the  Headstrong.  The  humor  is  of  the 
hearty,  reckless  kind  that  sometimes  oversteps  the  line  of 
good  taste,  though  that  particular  phase  of  it  did  not  seem 
to  give  any  offence  to  contemporary  readers.  Walter  Scott 


68  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

discovered  the  book  and  relates  how  he  spent  several  even 
ings  reading  it  aloud  until  he  and  his  guests  were  "sore  with 
laughter."  He  did  it  the  high  honor  of  comparing  it  with 
the  works  of  Dean  Swift  and  of  Laurence  Sterne. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  merit  of  the  book,  and  one 
which  later  in  life  Irving  felt  moved  to  insist  upon.  He  would 
have  the  book  read,  not  merely  as  humor,  but  as  in  some  sense 
poetry,  that  is  to  say,  as  a  work  of  the  romantic  and  creative 
imagination.  He  had  intended,  in  this  amusing  form,  he  said 
to  embody  the  traditions  and  customs  of  his  native  city,  "to 
clothe  home  scenes  and  places  and  familiar  names  with  those 
imaginative  and  whimsical  associations  so  seldom  met  with  in 
our  new  country,  but  which  live  like  charms  and  spells  about 
the  cities  of  the  old  world,  binding  the  heart  of  the  native 
inhabitant  to  his  home. ' '  How  well  he  succeeded  was  attested 
by  the  swarm  of  investigators  who  followed  him  and,  as  he 
expressed  it,  almost  crowded  him  off  the  legendary  ground 
he  had  been  the  first  to  explore.  But  no  investigator  can  rob 
us  of  this  legendary  and  now  enchanted  field.  It  was  Irving's 
triumph  that  he  re-created  this  past  and  yet  left  it,  to  the 
imagination,  even  more  remotely  past  than  ever,  a  fairy  realm 
of  antiquity  safe  from  the  desecration  of  the  mere  historian. 
The  smoke  of  the  burghers'  pipes  hangs  like  a  haze  over  the 
picture,  softening,  yet  leaving  plainly  discernible  all  the  essen 
tial  features, — the  luxuriant  cabbage-gardens,  the  brick-gabled 
houses,  the  women's  quilted  calico  caps  and  short,  spreading 
petticoats,  the  men's  brass  buttons  and  eel-skin  queues. 

"Ah,  blissful  and  never-to-be-forgotten  age!  when  everything 
was  better  than  it  has  ever  been  since,  or  ever  will  be  again,  when 
Buttermilk  Channel  was  quite  dry  at  low  water,  when  the  shad  in 
the  Hudson  were  all  salmon,  .  .  .  when  as  yet  New  Amsterdam  was 
a  mere  pastoral  town,  shrouded  in  groves  of  sycamores  and  willows, 
and  surrounded  by  trackless  forests  and  wide-spreading  waters,  that 
seemed  to  shut  out  all  the  cares  and  vanities  of  a  wicked  world." 


IRVING  G9 

Notwithstanding  the  success  of  the  Knickerbocker  His 
tory,  Irving  did  not  yet  decide  for  a  literary  career.  The 
book,  like  many  another  masterpiece  of  humor, 
Ib?old  had  been  written  or  at  least  finished,  in  the  midst 
of  profound  personal  grief.  Matilda  Hoffman,  a 
girl  of  seventeen,  to  whom  Irving  was  deeply  attached,  had 
suddenly  died.  The  shock  was  one  from  which  he  recovered 
but  slowly,  perhaps  never  entirely;  at  any  rate,  partly  owing 
to  this  and  partly  to  other  considerations,  he  remained 
throughout  life  unmarried.  In  1815  he  went  again  to  Europe 
for  a  short  visit,  in  the  interests  of  his  brothers'  hardware  and 
cutlery  business,  in  which  he  was  a  rather  inactive  partner. 
The  visit,  as  it  chanced,  lasted  seventeen  years.  The  first 
five  years  of  this  period  were  spent  in  England.  The  mer 
cantile  enterprise  failed,  and  Irving  was  once  more  adrift. 
Scott  would  have  assisted  him  to  an  editorship,  but  the  old 
vagabond  literary  instincts  were  asserting  themselves  too 
strongly  again  to  allow  him  to  look  with  favor  upon  routine 
journalism.  Clearly,  it  was  to  be  literature  at  last,  but 
literature  and  freedom,  not  literature  and  drudgery  and 
time-serving. 

He  had  been  for  some  time  revolving  the  plan  of  a  volume 
of  literary  essays  on  divers  subjects.  Now,  feeling  the  need 
of  prompt  publication,  he  sent  off  such  papers  as 
he  had  completed  to  America,  where  they  were 
printed,  and  published  simultaneously  at  New 
York,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore,  as  the  Sketch- 
Book,  written  by  "Geoffrey  Crayon,  Gent."  This  was  in 
May,  1819.  The  first  number  contained  the  first  five  num 
bers  of  the  work  as  we  now  have  it,  "Rip  Van  Winkle"  being 
the  most  conspicuous.  Other  numbers  followed,  the  sixth 
containing  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,"  and  the  seventh 
(1820)  closing  the  series.  The  whole  was  then  published  at 
London  in  two  volumes,  with  Scott  once  more  in  the  role  of 


70  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

good  angel.  The  early  numbers  had  already  attracted 
attention  in  England,  and  naturally  enough;  for  to  a  charm  of 
personality  and  a  finish  of  style  scarcely  excelled  by  the  best 
English  prose  writers,  they  added  a  freshness  of  spirit,  and 
occasionally  of  theme,  that  was  quite  un-English.  Jeffrey, 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  who  could  have  had  no  possible 
prejudice  in  favor  of  the  book,  gave  it  a  cordial  welcome, — 
most  cordial  for  Jeffrey.  The  gracious  tone  of  the  essays 
was  well  calculated  to  disarm  criticism,  the  humor  of  several 
sketches  was  irresistible,  and  if  the  pathos  of  others  was 
drawn  in  rather  heavy  lines,  so  much  the  better,  for  the  age 
was  sentimental.  American  literature  was  no  longer  a 
promise,  but  a  fact. 

Irving  took  his  success  modestly— was  even  alarmed  by  it 
and  feared  that  it  could  not  last.  But  with  the  praises  of 
Scott,  Byron,  and  Moore,  and  the  encouragement  of  his  pub 
lishers  he  could  scarcely  doubt  long.  At  any  rate'he  kept  on, 
and  in  the  intervals  of  travel  on  the  continent  he  completed 
two  more  volumes — Bracebridge  Hall  in  1822,  and  Tales  of  a 
Traveller  in  1824.  They  contained  many  excellent  things, 
some,  like  "The  Stout  Gentleman"  and  "Dolph  Heyliger," 
that  have  become  fairly  classic,  but  they  were  scarcely 
different  enough  from  the  Sketch-Book  in  either  form  or 
treatment  to  add  anything  to  the  author's  reputation.  In 
1826  he  went  to  Spain,  drawn  thither  by  the  old  magic  of 
romantic  associations,  and  settled  down  to  work  of  an  his 
torical  nature.  The  chief  results  were  the  Life  and  Voyages 
of  Columbus  (1828),  the  Conquest  of  Granada  (1829),  and  the 
Alhambra(l832). 

Irving's  historical  works  must  not  be  judged  by  the  tests 
we  apply  today.  He  had  not  scholarship  in  the  modern 
sense,  nor  the  philosophic  mind,  though  neither  was  he 
seriously  deficient  in  these  qualities.  His  defect  was  really 
an  excess — an  excess  of  imagination  and  sympathy.  He 


IRVING  71 

considered  it  the  duty  of  a  historian  to  be  charitable,  and  he 
was  prone  to  magnify  the  deeds  and  the  virtues  of  his  heroes. 
Thus  the  Columbus  is  more  delightful  than  trustworthy;  but 
it  was  so  much  better  than  anything  before  it  that  its  author 
was  honored  with  a  gold  medal  from  the  British  Royal 
Society  of  Literature,  and  the  book  long  and  deservedly 
remained  a  standard  biography.  The  Conquest  of  Granada, 
too,  is  an  excellent  work  of  its  kind,  and  reads  like  a  romance, 
which,  in  fact,  it  partly  is. 

In  the  Alhambra,  however,  Irving  once  more  escaped  suffi 
ciently  from  the  thraldom  of  facts  to  be  quite  at  home,  and  in 
„  this  work  he  repeated  the  success  of  the  Knicker 
bocker  and  the  Sketch-Book.  Prescott,  indeed, 
called  it  the  Spanish  Sketch-Book,  and  the  Spanish  them 
selves  have  always  regarded  it  as  a  kind  of  prose-poem.  It 
is  a  happy  mixture  of  fact  and  fancy,  of  history  and  legend, 
in  which  the  old  Moorish  palace  and  fortress  is  removed  as  by 
a  rod  of  enchantment  from  the  material  world  and  set  in  the 
realm  of  the  imagination,  secure  against  decay.  Moreover, 
in  this  book,  Irving  has  done  a  peculiar  service  to  Spain. 
For  while  he  has  taken  great  pains  to  be  accurate,  correcting 
certain  fanciful  conceptions  of  the  country  and  portraying 
it  for  the  stern,  rugged,  and  even  barren  land  that  it  is,  he  has 
yet  enveloped  it  more  inseparably  than  ever  with  the  atmos 
phere  of  romance.  Travel  in  Spain  to  one  who  has  read 
Irving  must  be  a  very  different  thing  from  what  it  is  to  one 
who  has  not.  It  is  just  such  a  poet's  service  as  Scott  did  for 
the  Highlands  of  Scotland  or  Byron  for  the  Isles  of  Greece. 

"I  tread  haunted  ground,  and  am  surrounded  by  romantic  asso 
ciations.  From  earliest  boyhood,  when,  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson, 
I  first  pored  over  the  pages  of  an  old  Spanish  story  about  the  wars  of 
Granada,  that  city  has  ever  been  a  subject  of  my  waking  dreams;  and 
often  have  I  trod  in  fancy  the  romantic  halls  of  the  Alhambra.  Be 
hold  for  once  a  day-dream  realized;  yet  I  can  scarcely  credit  my  senses 


72  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

or  believe  that  I  do  indeed  inhabit  the  palace  of  Boabdil,  and  look  down 
from  its  balconies  upon  chivalric  Granada.  As  I  loiter  through  the 
Oriental  chambers,  and  hear  the  murmuring  of  fountains  and  the  song 
of  the  nightingale;  as  I  inhale  the  odo'r  of  the  rose,  and  feel  the  influence 
of  the  balmy  climate,  I  am  almost  tempted  to  fancy  myself  in  the  Par 
adise  of  Mahomet,  and  that  the  plump  little  Dolores  is  one  of  the  bright- 
eyed  Houris,  destined  to  administer  to  the  happiness  of  true  believers. 

"The  peculiar  charm  of  this  old  dreamy  palace  is  its  power  of 
calling  up  vague  reveries  and  picturings  of  the  past,  and  thus  cloth 
ing  naked  realities  with  the  illusions  of  the  memory  and  the  imagina 
tion.  As  I  delight  to  walk  in  these  'vain  shadows,'  I  am  prone  to 
seek  those  parts  of  the  Alhambra  which  are  most  favorable  to  this 
phantasmagoria  of  the  mind;  and  none  are  more  so  than  the  Court 
of  Lions,  and  its  surrounding  halls.  Here  the  hand  of  time  has  fallen 
the  lightest,  and  the  traces  of  Moorish  elegance  and  splendor  exist  in 
almost  their  original  brilliancy.  Earthquakes  have  shaken  the  foun 
dations  of  this  pile,  and  rent  its  rudest  towers;  yet  see!  not  one  of  those 
slender  columns  has  been  displaced,  not  an  arch  of  that  light  and  fragile 
colonnade  has  given  way,  and  all  the  fairy  fretwork  of  these  domes, 
apparently  as  unsubstantial  as  the  crystal  fabrics  of  a  morning's  frost, 
yet  exist  after  the  lapse  of  centuries,  almost  as  fresh  as  if  from  the  hand 
of  the  Moslem  artist.  I  write  in  the  midst  of  these  mementos  of  the 
past,  in  the  fresh  hour  of  early  morning,  in  the  fated  Hall  of  the  Aben- 
cerrages.  The  blood-stained  fountain,  the  legendary  monument  of 
their  massacre,  is  before  me;  the  lofty  jet  almost  casts  its  de\v  upon  my 
paper.  How  difficult  to  reconcile  the  ancient  tale  of  violence  and  blood 
with  the  gentle  and  peaceful  scene  around!  Everything  here  appears 
calculated  to  inspire  kind  and  happy  feelings,  for  everything  is  delicate 
and  beautiful.  The  very  light  falls  tenderly  from  above,  through  the 
lantern  of  a  dome  tinted  and  wrought  as  if  by  fairy  hands.  Through 
the  ample  and  fretted  arch  of  the  portal  I  behold  the  Court  of  Lions,  with 
brilliant  sunshine  gleaming  along  its  colonnades  and  sparkling  in  its 
fountains.  The  lively  swallow  dives  into  the  court,  and  then  surging 
upwards,  darts  away  twittering  over  the  roofs;  the  busy  bee  toils  hum 
ming  among  the  flower-beds;  and  painted  butterflies  hover  from  plant 
to  plant,  and  flutter  up  and  sport  with  each  other  in  the  sunny  air.  It 
needs  but  a  slight  exertion  of  the  fancy  to  picture  some  pensive  beauty 
of  the  harem,  loitering  in  these  secluded  haunts  of  Oriental  luxury. 

"He,  however,  who  would  behold  this  scene  under  an  aspect  more 
in  unison  with  its  fortunes,  let  him  come  when  the  shadows  of  evening 


IRVING  73 

temper  the  brightness  of  the  court,  and  throw  a  gloom  into  the  surround 
ing  halls.  Then  nothing  can  be  more  serenely  melancholy,  or  more  in 
harmony  with  the  tale  of  departed  grandeur. 

"At  such  times  I  am  apt  to  seek  the  Hall  of  Justice,  whose  deep 
shadowy  arcades  extend  across  the  upper  end  of  the  court.  Here 
were  performed,  in  presence  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  and  their  tri 
umphant  court,  the  pompous  ceremonies  of  high  mass,  on  taking  pos 
session  of  the  Alhambra.  The  very  cross  is  still  to  be  seen  upon  the 
wall,  where  the  altar  was  erected,  and  where  officiated  the  Grand 
Cardinal  of  Spain,  and  others  of  the  highest  religious  dignitaries  of 
the  land.  I  picture  to  myself  the  scene  when  this  place  was  filled 
with  the  conquering  host,  that  mixture  of  mitred  prelate,  and  shorn 
monk,  and  steel-clad  knight,  and  silken  courtier,  when  crosses  and 
crosiers  and  religious  standards  were  mingled  with  proud  armorial 
ensigns  and  the  banners  of  the  haughty  chiefs  of  Spain,  and  flaunted 
in  triumph  through  these  Moslem  halls.  I  picture  to  myself  Colum 
bus,  the  future  discoverer  of  the  world,  taking  his  modest  stand  in  a 
remote  corner,  the  humble  and  neglected  spectator  of  the  pageant. 
I  see  in  imagination  the  Catholic  sovereigns  prostrating  themselves 
before  the  altar,  and  pouring  forth  thanks  for  their  victory;  while  the 
vaults  resound  with  sacred  minstrelsy,  and  the  deep-toned  Te  Deum. 

"The  transient  illusion  is  over — the  pageant  melts  from  the  fancy — 
monarch,  priest,  and  warrior  return  into  oblivion  with  the  poor  Moslems 
over  whom  they  exulted.  The  hall  of  their  triumph  is  waste  and  deso 
late.  The  bat  flits  about  its  twilight  vault,  and  the  owl  hoots  from 
the  neighboring  tower  of  Comares." 

Irving  had  now  produced  three  works,  each  of  a  high  order 
in  its  kind — one  of  humor,  one  of  description  and  sentiment, 
and  one  of  romance.  He  was  to  write  nothing 
greater  than  these,  though  many  years  of  literary 
activity  remained  to  him.  Between  1829  and  1831 
he  was  in  London  again,  as  Secretary  of  Legation  to  the 
Court  of  St.  James.  In  1832  he  was  able  to  carry  out 
the  design  he  had  for  some  time  been  cherishing  of  returning 
to  America.  Edward  Everett,  who  reviewed  the  Alhambra 
for  the  North  American  Review  of  that  year,  took  the  occasion 
to  congratulate  both  Irving  and  America,  declaring  that 
Irving,  by  identifying  his  future  fortunes  with  the  United 


74  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

States,  best  consulted  both  his  happiness  and  his  permanent 
literary  fame.  There  had  been  some  foolish  criticism  of  the 
author  for  remaining  so  long  abroad  and  writing  on  foreign 
themes.  But  one  of  his  temperament  could  not  be  blamed  for 
finding  in  Old  World  society  much  that  he  really  needed  and 
could  not  get  in  the  New.  Besides,  though  the  bulk  of  his 
Sketch-Book  had  a  British  inspiration,  the  best  things  in  it 
were  wholly  American;  and  what  more  fitting  theme  could  an 
American  in  Spain  have  chosen  than  the  life  of  Columbus? 
Irving  was  loyal  at  heart,  and  the  good  sense  of  his  country 
men  knew  it,  and  they  applauded  him  to  the  echo  when,  at  a 
public  banquet  at  New  York  in  his  honor,  he  closed  his  speech 
.with  the  declaration  that  he  should  remain  here  as  long  as 
he  lived. 

Now  in  his  fiftieth  year  and  passing  the  prime  of  life,  he 
was  desirous  of  settling  down  in  a  home  of  his  own.     First, 

however,  for  the  roving  instinct  was  not  yet  dead, 
w^rks.  he  wanted  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  something  of 

the  country  that  had  grown  so  in  his  absence,  and 
he  embarked  on  a  tour  that  took  him  through  the  forests 
and  Indian  mounds  of  Ohio  west  to  the  buffalo  ranges  of  the 
upper  Arkansas  and  south  to  New  Orleans.  Then  he  se 
cured  a  picturesque  spot  at  Tarrytown  on  the  Hudson,  not 
far  from  Sleepy  Hollow,  and  began  to  remodel  an  old  stone 
cottage  into  a  "snug  little  Dutch  nookery,"  which  grew  in 
time  to  the  well-known  Sunnyside,  his  home  for  the  remain 
der  of  his  life.  Once  he  yielded  to  political  pressure  and 
accepted  the  post  of  Minister  to  Spain,  spending  the  four 
years  from  1842  to  1846  at  Madrid.  Apart  from  this,  he 
passed  his  time  almost  exclusively  in  literary  work.  A 
Tour  on  the  Prairies  appeared  in  1835  as  a  part  of  The  Crayon 
Miscellany,  Astoria  in  1836,  The  Adventures  of  Captain  Bonne- 
ville  in  1837,  Oliver  Goldsmith  and  Mahomet  and  His  Successors 
in  1849,  Wolfert's  Roost  in  1855,  and  Life  of  Washington  in 


IRVING  75 

1855-1859.  He  had,  it  seems,  even  from  boyhood,  cherished 
the  plan  of  writing  a  history  of  the  conquest  of  Mexico,  but 
when  he  learned  that  Prescott  desired  to  undertake  such  a 
work,  he  magnanimously  abandoned  the  field  to  him.  Astoria 
was  a  semi-historical  compilation,  prepared  in  collaboration 
with  his  nephew,  to  celebrate  the  commercial  enterprise  of 
John  Jacob  Astor  in  establishing  a  colony  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Columbia  River.  The  biography  of  Goldsmith  was  a 
work  which  he  was  well  qualified  to  write,  for  in  temper 
ament,  in  tastes,  and  in  clearness  and  charm  of  literary  style, 
he  had  much  in  common  with  the  author  of  the  Citizen  of  the 
World  and  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  The  Life  of  Washington,, 
the  life  of  the  pioneer  of  freedom  in  America,  was  a  most 
fitting  task  to  crown  the  labors  of  the  pioneer  of  American 
literature,  who  had  told  also  the  life-story  of  him  who  discov 
ered  the  New  World  to  the  Old. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  year  which  saw  the  publication  of 
the  fifth  and  final  volume  of  the  last  named  work,  on  Novem 
ber  28,  1859,  Irving  died  at  his  home  on  the  Hudson.  He  was 
buried  on  a  hill  overlooking  the  river  and  a  portion  of  the 
Sleepy  Hollow  valley. 

It  is  not  at  once  easy  to  say  which  is  the  strongest  among 

Irving's  several  titles  to  our  praise.     It  has  sometimes  been 

the  fashion  to  regard  the  Knickerbocker  History 

Summary 

and  as  his  best  work,  and  it  is  easy  to  understand  the 

Estimate.  . 

temptations  which  have  led  to  such  a  judgment. 
The  book  was  wholly  American  in  its  inspiration,  it  was 
written  with  manifest  spontaneity  and  an  almost  reckless 
gayety,  its  plan  is  highly  original,  its  humor  genuine  and  all- 
pervading,  and  it  has  a  largeness  of  scope  and  wholeness  of 
texture  that  were  not  always  found  in  his  writings.  The  fact 
remains,  however,  that  the  majority  of  his  readers  have 
taken  the  Sketch-Book  most  closely  to  heart,  and  perhaps 
they  are  right.  The  latter  book  is  admittedly  wanting  in 


76  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

unity,  but  it  makes  up  for  that  in  variety;  and  while  the 
stories  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  Ichabod  Crane,  and  the  Christ 
mas  Dinner  may  seem  but  trifles  in  extent,  they  are  not 
trifles  when  measured  by  the  standards  of  literary  art.  Nor 
does  it  matter  greatly  that  the  whole  series  is  in  some  sense 
the  Spectator  revived:  the  masters  of  English  prose  have 
never  been  so  many  as  to  make  such  revivals  unwelcome. 

We  may  readily  grant,  indeed,  that  Irving's  greatness  did 
not  lie  in  originality.  He  was  not  so  well  fitted  to  create  a 
tradition  as  to  perpetuate  one  or  give  it  a  new  direction. 
There  was  nothing  revolutionary  in  his  make-up;  literature 
was  good  enough  as  he  found  it,  and  he  preserved  to  the  end  a 
conservative,  almost  aristocratic  ideal  of  its  office.  It  is  well, 
too,  that  he  did  so,  since  it  was  to  be  his  task  to  force  from 
English  readers  the  first  reluctant  approval.  Largely  be 
cause  he  was  not  revolutionary,  he  was  admitted  at  once 
to  their  favor;  his  homely,  sentimental,  or  mediaeval  themes 
were  entirely  safe  ones;  and  his  style,  formed  upon  familiar 
British  models,  found  its  audience  prepared.  At  the  same 
time,  the  American  atmosphere  lurked  about  it  all,  and  so, 
almost  imperceptibly,  he  bridged  the  gulf  between  the  two 
nations  and  linked  our  literature  to  theirs.  That  this  service 
was  a  great  one  is  unquestionable. 

Of  the  sentimentalism  which  pervades  so  much  of  his 
work,  little  need  be  said  in  apology.  Its  influence  has  some 
times  been  bad;  young  admirers  of  Irving  and  his  weak 
imitators  have  very  often  fallen  into  a  style  of  effusive 
tenderness  and  namby-pamby  moralizing  that  is  anything 
but  agreeable.  But  for  the  man  who  longed  to  seek  out  the 
tomb  of  Petrarch's  Laura,  and  was  ready  to  grieve  over  the 
downfall  of  Napoleon,  it  seems  only  a  natural  and  inoffensive 
self-expression.  Irving  is  saved,  indeed,  from  mawkishness, 
by  his  underlying  manliness  and  sincerity  and  his  fund  of 
humor.  The  blend  of  sentiment  and  humor  which  made  a 


COOPER  77 

perfect  tale  of  the  "  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow"  was  a  blend  na 
tive  to  the  man.  And  after  all,  there  is  far  more  health  than 
morbidness  in  his  sentiment.  It  is  impossible  to  read  even 
those  passages  of  the  Sketch-Book  which  describe  his  voyage 
across  the  ocean  in  search  of  health,  without  catching  the 
infection  of  his  energy  and  buoyant  spirits.  What  a  good 
thing  it  is  to  be  alive,  he  seems  to  say — what  a  busy,  brilliant, 
bounteous  world  it  is !  Such  a  personality  as  this  was  sure  to 
make  its  way  in  the  world  of  men,  and,  with  the  gift  of  a  style 
as  lucid  and  winning  as  itself,  no  less  in  the  world  of  letters. 
Further  characterization  of  his  writings  seems  almost  idle. 
They  are  very  easily  classified,  since  they  require  no  profound 
study,  offer  no  puzzles,  and  excite  no  hostility.  Everybody 
reads  them  and  likes  them,  and  there  the  matter  ends.  They 
are  works  of  the  heart  rather  than  of  the  head — gentle,  human 
books,  that  belong  on  the  same  shelf  with  the  writings  of 
Addison  and  Goldsmith.  If  we  desire  to  satisfy  the  hunger  of 
the  intellect,  to  be  thrilled  with  a  new  hope,  or  to  get  solace 
for  a  lost  faith,  we  do  not  go  to  Irving.  He  has  little  food 
and  few  stimulants,  and  no  medicines  save  such  as  the  wisest 
doctors  always  prescribe — fresh  air  and  sunshine  and  a 
cheerful  spirit.  He  is  an  entertainer  for  the  idle  hour,  not 
a  companion  of  the  unsatisfied  years.  Yet,  without  being 
either  a  poet  or  a  scholar,  he  goes  so  directly  to  all  that  is 
best  in  human  nature  that  he  wins  for  his  admirers  both  poets 
and  scholars,  and  at  the  same  time  that  great  audience  of  the 
uncritical  that  poets  and  scholars  cannot  always  win. 

JAMES  FEN  I  MO  RE  COOPER,  1789-1851 

In  James  Fenimore  Cooper  we  have  once  more  a  romancer 
who  approaches  the  novelist  type,  inviting  comparison  with 
Brockden  Brown  and  his  successors.  But  Cooper  stands 
out  from  the  group  of  pioneer  novelists  in  strong  relief  as  the 
one  man  who,  to  a  thorough  knowledge  of  primitive  con- 


78  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

ditions  on  the  frontier,  added  both  a  quick  discernment  of 
their  romantic  elements  and  the  artist's  power  of  broad  and 
serious  imaginative  treatment.  He  lacked  Brown's  subtlety 
of  mental  analysis,  but  he  was  in  every  way  saner  and  whole- 
somer,  with  a  stronger  grasp  upon  the  realities  of  life. 
Whatever  he  did  was  done  in  a  large,  free  way;  and  Brown's 
Philadelphia  scenes,  Miss  Sedgwick's  pictures  of  New  Eng 
land  home  and  school  life,  and  the  Dutch  interiors  of  Paulding 
pale  before  the  sweeps  of  forest  and  ocean  that  fill  the  back 
ground  of  Cooper's  canvas. 

This  eminently  befits  the  man  whose  father  believed 
himself  to  have  settled  more  acres  than  any  other  man  in 
America,  and  who  spent  the  first  thirty-one  years 
of  his  own  life  mostly  out  of  doors,  in  unconscious 
preparation  for  the  writing  of  the  thirty-one  years  to  follow. 
He  was  born  at  Burlington,  New  Jersey,  September  15, 
1789,  the  eleventh  of  twelve  children.  He  was  christened 
simply  James, — Fenimore,  the  name  of  his  mother,  who 
was  of  Swedish  descent,  not  being  assumed  until  1826.  When 
he  was  but  fourteen  months  old,  his  father,  who  had  come  into 
possession  of  large  tracts  of  land  about  the  head- waters  of  the 
Susquehanna  in  central  New  York,  moved  thither  with  his 
entire  household.  There,  on  the  southeastern  shore  of 
Otsego  Lake,  had  already  been  founded  Cooperstown,  and 
there,  within  a  few  years,  was  erected  the  large,  baronial- 
like  family  mansion,  Otsego  Hall — America's  Abbotsford, 
it  has  sometimes  been  called — the  home  of  Cooper's  youth 
and  of  his  later  manhood.  It  was  the  advance  of  civilization 
upon  the  wilderness.  The  charm  of  the  region,  to  this  day 
remarkably  picturesque,  made  a  deep  impression  on  the 
growing  boy.  The  "beauteous  valley"  in  the  uplands,  the 
lake  that  "lay  imbedded  in  mountains  of  evergreen,  with 
the  long  shadows  of  the  pines  on  its  surface,"  the  "dark 
ribbon  of  water  that  gushed  from  the  lake's  outlet  and  wound 


COOPER  79 

its  way  toward  the  distant  Chesapeake,"  are  all  faithfully 
and  lovingly  described  in  the  opening  chapters  of  The 
Pioneers — a  story  in  which  it  is  easy  to  substitute  for  Judge 
Marmaduke  Temple  of  Templeton  the  name  of  Judge 
William  Cooper  of  Coopers  town.  In  the  settlement  itself 
was  a  motley  population — traders,  trappers,  and  wood 
cutters — gathered  from  all  quarters  of  the  globe ;  while  to  the 
north  and  west  stretched  the  seemingly  interminable  forests 
of  beech  and  maple,  oak  and  pine,  with  their  denizens  of  the 
wild  deer,  wolf,  bear,  and  panther,  and  the  scarcely  less  wild 
Indian. 

Cooper's  schooling  began  at  the  village  "Academy,  "was 
continued  in  the  family  of  an  English  rector  at  Albany,  and 
was  concluded,  though  not  completed,  with  three  years  at 
Yale.  He  entered  Yale  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  but  as  he 
distinguished  himself  throughout  his  course  more  for  mischief 
than  for  scholarship,  he  was  dismissed  without  being  allowed 
to  graduate.  He  was  thus  left,  like  most  of  the  writers  of  the 
central  and  southern  states,  without  the  rigorous  college 
training  that  fell,  with  the  single  exception  of  Whittier, 
to  the  lot  of  the  New  Englanders.  But  the  young  Cooper 
had  little  thought  of  becoming  a  professional  man,  and 
probably  took  his  dismissal  from  Yale  with  a  light  heart,  the 
more  so  as  it  resulted  in  securing  for  him  an  education  better 
suited  to  his  temperament.  His  father,  who,  as  a  Congres 
sional  representative  and  public  man,  would  have  some  polit 
ical  influence,  decided  that  he  should  fit  himself  for  the 
navy,  and,  as  a  preliminary,  the  youth  of  seventeen  shipped 
before  the  mast  of  a  merchant  vessel  in  the  autumn  of  1806. 
The  year's  voyage,  which,  fortunately  in  this  case,  was  excep 
tionally  stormy,  took  him  from  New  York  to  London,  thence 
to  Gibraltar,  and  by  way  again  of  London,  back  to  Phila 
delphia.  His  commission  as  midshipman  in  the  navy 
promptly  followed.  He  served  for  three  years,  occupied  part 


80  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

of  the  time  in  building  a  brig  on  Lake  Ontario,  and  part  of 
the  time  in  charge  of  the  gunboats  on  Lake  Champlain. 
After  his  marriage  in  1811,  he  resigned  his  commission,  and 
settled  down  to  a  happy  domestic  life,  residing  alternately 
near  his  old  home  in  Otsego  County,  and  near  the  home  of 
his  wife's  parents  in  Westchester  County.  He  was  engaged 
in  the  somewhat  aimless  occupations  of  a  gentleman  farmer, 
with  no  thought  of  duties  or  interests  extending  beyond  his 
own  household.  But  suddenly,  after  nine  years  of  sheep- 
shearing  and  tree-planting,  by  what  seems  the  merest  freak 
of  fancy  he  found  himself  launched  on  a  literary  career. 

It  must  have  been  in  1819  or  1820.  He  had  been  reading 
an  English  society  novel,  and  as  he  laid  it  aside  he  declared  in 
disgust:  "I  could  write  a  better  story  myself."  He  was 
challenged  to  do  it,  and  the  matter  passed  from 
Jest  to  earnest.  Precaution:  a  Novel  (it  was 
the  custom  then  to  flaunt  the  moral  of  a  story  in 
its  title)  was  published  in  the  fall  of  1820.  It  was  a  conven 
tional  story  of  English  society,  and  readers  were  allowed  to 
believe  that  the  author  was  an  Englishman.  But  it  found 
few  readers.  That  it  should  have  found  any  only  proves 
that  there  is  always  an  indiscriminate  public  ready  to  read 
anything  called  a  novel.  There  was  no  inspiration  behind 
the  work.  What  Cooper  knew  of  England  was  confined  to 
what  he  had  been  able  to  pick  up  while  on  shore  leave  in 
sailor  rig  at  London;  and  what  he  knew  of  English  "high 
life"  must  have  been  all  learned  from  books,  probably  from 
the  novels  whose  peculiar  merits  he  was  trying  to  excel. 
But  Precaution  was  only  a  beginning.  His  friends  com 
plained  of  his  having  gone  abroad  for  a  theme;  he  owed 
something  to  America.  Somewhat  doggedly  he  set  to  work 
again,  turning  to  the  American  Revolution  for  a  plot  and. 
choosing  for  the  scene  the  "neutral  ground"  of  Westchester 
County,  where  he  was  then  living.  But  he  had  little  faith 


COOPER  81 

that  his  countrymen  could  be  made  to  take  interest  in  a  story 
of  scenes  so  familiar  to  them.  The  first  volume  of  The  Spy 
was  printed  before  the  second  was  begun;  and  to  set  at  rest 
the  fears  of  the  printer  in  regard  to  its  length,  the  last  chapter 
of  the  second  volume  was  written,  printed,  and  paged  before 
the  intervening  chapters  were  written.  It  appeared  late  in 
1821  and  its  success  was  as  immediate  as  it  was  unexpected. 
There  were  three  editions  and  a  dramatization  within  three 
months.  It  was  republished  in  England  with  equal  success, 
and  was  promptly  translated  into  French. 

Cooper  was  roused  to  a  consciousness  of  his  powers.  He 
had  discovered  that  writing  is  a  trick  not  necessarily  learned 
at  schools ;  he  had  discovered,  too,  something  of  the  wealth  of 
his  own  imagination  and  of  the  joys  of  creation.  He  turned 
with  lively  affection  to  his  other  home,  the  region  about 
Otsego  Lake,  feeling  that  it  would  be  an  easy  and  pleasant 
task  to  invest  it  likewise  with  a  romantic  interest.  The 
result  was  The  Pioneers,  published  early  in  1823,  the  one  of  all 
his  books  into  which  he  put  most  of  his  heart.  He  wrote  it, 
he  declared,  to  please  himself;  but  it  pleased  the  public  too, 
and  so  well  that  there  could  be  henceforth  no  question  of  his 
fame  or  calling.  One  more  field  immediately  allured  him 
with  its  romantic  possibilities — the  sea,  which  he  had  known 
so  well  in  his  youth,  and  which  still  called  to  him  with  its 
old  charm  as  he  looked  out  from  the  Westchester  hills  across 
the  waves  of  Long  Island  Sound.  He  wrote  and  published 
The  Pilot  in  the  same  year. 

From  this  time  on  there  was  no  pause.  Year  after  year  he 
turned,  in  the  exercise  of  his  imagination,  from  history  and 

tradition  to  the  wilderness,  and  from  the  wilder- 
Year's,  ness  to  the  sea,  until,  just  the  year  before  his 

death,  he  published  the  last  of  the  thirty-two  tales 
that  bear  his  name.  It  is  impossible  to  contemplate  this 
result  without  surprise.  Cooper  was  hardly  the  man  one 


82  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

would  have  expected  to  find  in  the  field  of  letters.  He  would 
have  made  an  excellent  colonizer  or  general.  But  he  wielded 
the  pen  as,  in  other  circumstances,  he  would  have  wielded 
the  sword  or  driven  the  plow,  iridefatigably  and  fearlessly. 
His  literary  industry  was  probably  unequalled  by  any  man  of 
his  time  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  In  addition  to  his 
romances,  which  he  produced  at  the  rate  of  rather  more  than 
one  a  year  (The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  was  planned  and  written 
in  four  months),  he  found  time  to  write  various  reviews  and 
articles,  of  a  political  or  historical  nature,  and  notably  his 
History  of  the  United  States  Navy  (1839).  Besides  this,  he 
attended  faithfully  to  his  social  and  business  duties.  He  paid 
off  debts;  he  founded  a  club  in  New  York  City,  and  kept  it 
alive;  he  travelled  in  Europe  and  studied  with  keen  interest 
social  and  political  conditions  there,  publishing  notes  of  his 
travel;  he  engaged  in  numerous  controversies,  and  when  they 
led  him  into  libel  suits,  as  they  frequently  did,  he  argued  his 
own  cause. 

The  story  of  Cooper's  controversies  is  not  a  pleasant  one 
to  read,  and  it  might  well  be  omitted  if  it  were  not  so  inti 
mately  connected  with  his  personality  and  the  character  of 
many  of  his  later  works.  To  begin  with,  all  the  traits  of  his 
disposition,  whether  good  or  bad,  were  strongly  marked.  His 
character  can  be  read  very  plainly  in  his  portrait.  He  was 
upright,  straightforward,  patriotic,  fearless,  combative,  and 
proud.  He  held  just  as  tenaciously  to  unreasonable  views  as 
to  reasonable  ones.  He  was  generally  reasonable  in  matters 
of  right,  but  unreasonable  in  matters  of  expediency.  He 
scorned  compromises.  He  could  not  wear  honesty  with 
grace  nor  temper  justice  with  amiability.  A  greater  man 
would  have  been  content  merely  to  be  in  the  right;  Cooper 
could  not  rest  until  he  had  proved  his  right  to  others.  The 
result  was  years  of  strife  and  bitterness  and  barren  victories ; 
for  even  to  win  his  cause  at  law  was  to  lose  it  in  the  hearts 


COOPER  83 

of  the  people.  In  1826  he  went  to  Europe  and  spent  seven 
years  at  the  various  capitals.  There  were  good  reasons  why 
he  should  find  life  there  congenial.  He  had  no  hatred  of  the 
English;  his  wife  had  come  of  a  Tory  family,  and  he  bad 
always  been  tolerant  toward  the  attitude  of  the  Tories  in 
the  Revolution,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  tale  of  The  Spy. 
Besides,  the  English  read  and  praised  his  books.  Indeed, 
wherever  he  might  go  in  Europe,  he  had  the  gratification  of 
seeing  translations  of  his  books  displayed  in  the  book-shops. 
Nevertheless,  the  European  contempt  for  most  things  Amer 
ican,  and  the  false  ideas  of  American  affairs  which  he  found 
everywhere  current,  were  things  he  could  not  abide.  He 
spoke  out  boldly  in  defence  of  his  country  in  conversation, 
at  public  dinners,  in  printed  articles,  and  in  letters.  He 
even  wrote  romances  embodying  his  views.  The  Red  Rover 
and  The  Wept  of  Wish-ton-Wish,  for  example,  contain 
some  very  plain  satire  on  foreign  arrogance  ("a  certain  con 
descension"  Lowell  called  it  forty  years  later) ;  and  The  Bravo 
and  The  Headsman  were  written  to  glorify  republican  ways 
and  institutions.  His  literary  work  suffered,  and  his  ends 
were  not  gained. 

He  came  back  to  America  in  1833,  only  to  find  that  his 
own  countrymen  did  not  appreciate  his  loyalty.  Apparently 
they  had  no  desire  for  a  defender  who  persisted  in  "flaunting 
his  Americanism  through  Europe"  and  redoubling  the  ridicule 
he  sought  to  allay.  He  turned  upon  the  Americans,  re 
viling  their  provincialism,  their  greed,  their  vulgarity,  in  the 
very  terms  in  which  he  had  heard  these  things  reviled  in 
Europe.  He  published  more  and  worse  romances — The  Mon- 
ikins,  Homeward  Bound,  Home  as  Found, — "six  volumes," 
said  Lowell,  "to  show  he's  as  good  as  a  lord."  "I  think," 
wrote  a  friend,  "you  lose  hold  on  the  American  public  by  rub 
bing  down  their  shins  with  brickbats  as  you  do."  Of  course 
he  lost  hold.  At  Cooperstown,  where  he  made  his  home  after 


84  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

his  return  from  Europe,  he  got  into  an  unfortunate  contro 
versy  with  his  fellow-townsmen  over  the  possession  of  a  piece 
of  land.  It  led  to  a  long  train  of  libel  suits.  Libel  suits  also 
followed  the  publication  of  his  Naval  History,  which  was 
characteristically  outspoken  in  its  judgments  of  many 
prominent  men  and  events.  But  with  every  case  he  won, 
and  he  won  almost  all,  he  lost  still  more  of  his  popularity. 

Naturally  he  grew  embittered.  Especially  did  he  grieve 
over  the  attacks  made  upon  him  for  his  Naval  History,  in 
wliich  he  had  tried  to  tell  the  simple  truth  as  he  saw  it,  with 
out  bias  or  partisanship.  He  took  some  consolation,  how 
ever,  from  the  thought  that  his  children  could,  in  the  future, 
"point  to  the  facts,  with  just  pride  that  they  had  a  father  who 
dared  to  stem  popular  prejudice  in  order  to  write  truth." 
He  found  refuge  in  his  home,  and  in  the  exercise  of  his  art, 
for  his  literary  fertility  seemed  to  increase  with  his  years 
and  in  spite  of  numerous  distractions.  Seventeen  of  his 
tales,  a  little  more  than  half  of  the  entire  number,  wTere 
written  between  1840  and  1850.  Ten  of  these  belong  to  the 
years  1840-1845,  including  at  least  four  of  high  rank,  The 
Pathfinder,  The  Deer-slayer,  The  Two  Admirals,  and  Wing- 
and-Wing.  But  he  never  quite  forgave  the  public,  and  it 
was  one  of  his  last  injunctions  to  his  family  that  no  one  should 
be  authorized  to  wrrite  his  biography.  He  died  in  1851,  on 
the  eve  of  his  sixty-second  birthday.  A  few  months  later  a 
public  gathering  in  his  memory  was  held  in  New  York  City, 
at  which  Webster  presided  and  Bryant  delivered  the  memo 
rial  address. 

In  reviewing  Cooper's  literary  product,  it  will  be  well  to 

fix  attention  upon  the  surviving  portion  only,  dismissing  at 

once  all  those  books  which  grew  out  of  temporary 

"The  Spy."  .  if  T 

passions  or  personal  prejudices  and  which  have 
fallen  into  the  oblivion  they  deserve.  First,  then,  to  follow 
a  division  already  indicated,  there  are  the  romances  drawn 


COOPER  85 

more  or  less  directly  from  history.  They  are  of  very  different 
degrees  of  merit.  Lionel  Lincoln,  which  ventured  upon  New 
England  soil  (it  has  stirring  accounts  of  the  fights  at  Concord 
and  Bunker  Hill)  was  a  relative  failure.  So,  likewise,  was 
Mercedes  of  Castile,  which  has  some  interest,  however,  in 
that  it  weaves  a  romance  about  the  first  voyage  of  Columbus. 
Better  are  Afloat  and  Ashore  and  Satanstoe,  tales  of  old 
colonial  life  in  New  York.  But  The  Spy,  which  made 
Cooper's  fame  at  home  and  which  carried  it  farther  abroad 
than  Irving's  was  ever  carried,  remains  still  one  of  his  most 
widely  read  books.  Moreover,  it  retained  for  three-quarters 
of  a  century  the  distinction  of  being  the  one  highly  successful 
romance  constructed  out  of  incidents  in  the  war  of  the 
Revolution.*  It  derives  its  chief  interest  from  its  central 
character,  Harvey  Birch,  the  Spy  of  the  Neutral  Ground,  a 
humble  peddler  and  patriot,  who  risks  life  and  honor  in  a 
condemned  office,  suspected  even  by  his  countrymen,  and 
who  goes  down  to  his  grave  with  no  other  exoneration  or 
reward  than  the  written,  but  unrevealed,  testimony  of  Wash 
ington  to  the  loyalty  of  his  deeds.  Few  heroes  of  fiction  have 
been  more  admired.  A  military  officer  in  Salvador  was 
known  to  speak  of  "Seiior  Birch"  as  a  "model  guerrillero," 
and  a  French  agent  of  the  secret  service  under  Louis  Philippe 
imitated  his, virtues. 

The  second  important  division  of  Cooper's  works  consists 
of  the  stories  of  the  frontier,  especially  the  five  Leather- 
Stocking  Tales.     These  latter  get  their  unity  and 

Leather-  J 

stocking  much  of  their  interest  from  a  singular  character, 
Natty  Bumppo,  who  appears  in  them  all  under 
various  names — Leather  Stocking,  Hawkeye,  Deerslayer, 
Pathfinder,  La  Longue  Carabine.  He  is  the  pioneer  of  the 
woods;  the  friend  of  the  Mohicans,  Chingachgook  and  Uncas, 

*  Kennedy's  Horse-Shoe  Robinson,  Simms's  Partisan,  Thompson's  Green  Mountain  Boys, 
and  Theodore  Winthrop's  Edwin  Brothertoft  hold  a  much  inferior  place.  Hawthorne's 
Septimius  Felton  was  left  unfinished. 


86  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

though  himself  a  white  man  "without  a  cross";  the  scout, 
hunter,  trapper,  and  philosopher,  who  is  always  ready  to 
judge  men  as  he  would  judge  animals,  according  to  their 
several  "gifts."  In  The  Pioneers  (1823),  the  first  of  the 
stories  of  the  wilderness,  he  is  portrayed  in  somewhat  rude 
outlines — an  old  man  in  the  background  of  the  tale,  living 
with  his  still  more  aged  friend,  Chingachgook,  now  chris 
tianized  into  Indian  John.  Cooper  could  have  had  no 
thought,  when  writing  this  book,  of  using  the  character  a 
second  time.  But  the  portrait  took  his  fancy,  and  when, 
in  1826,  he  came  to  write  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,,  he  intro 
duced  Leather-Stocking  again,  this  time  in  the  prime  of  his 
life,  taking,  with  Chingachgook  and  Uncas,  an  active  part 
in  the  French  and  Indian  War.  Here  he  appears  in  the 
dignity  of  mature  manhood,  with  an  Indian's  cunning, 
courage,  and  fortitude,  and  a  white  man's  finer  sense  of 
honor.  In  The  Prairie,  which  followed  in  1827,  are  depicted 
the  closing  scenes  of  his  life,  wherein,  pushed  by  civilization 
far  out  upon  the  Western  plains,  his  mind  at  the  last  moment 
wanders  pathetically  back  to  his  home  among  the  Otsego  hills. 
But  Cooper  was  not  yet  satisfied.  TWTO  more  chapters  were 
added  to  the  history  of  the  scout.  The  Pathfinder  (1840)  gives 
us  the  romance  of  his  middle  life,  by  the  shores  of  Lake  Ontario; 
The  Deer  slayer  (1841)  shows  him  on  his  first  wTar-path,  by 
the  Otsego.  Those  who  would  read  the  books  in  the  order 
of  events,  should  arrange  them  thus  (as  it  happens,  in  alpha 
betical  order) :  Deerslayer,  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  Pathfinder, 
Pioneers,  Prairie.  It  is  impossible  to  say  which  is  the  best  of 
the  five.  Most  readers  will  prefer  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 
for  the  lively  interest  of  its  rapidly  succeeding  events,  the 
narration  of  which  is  seldom  checked  by  description  or  mor 
alizing.  Cooper  himself  regarded  The  Pcihfinder  and  The 
Deer  slayer  as  his  best  works.  They  certainly  represent  him 
at  the  maturity  of  his  powers;  and  it  was  of  the  former  that 


COOPER  87 

Balzac  said:  "It  is  beautiful,  it  is  grand-  I  know  of  no  one 
in  the  world,  save  Walter  Scott,  who  has  risen  to  that  grand 
eur  and  serenity  of  colors."  Yet  The  Pioneers  and  The 
Prairie  have  charms  of  their  own,  the  former  with  its  almost 
lyric  descriptions  of  forest  and  lake,  the  latter  with  its  strange, 
overpowering  sense,  found  also  in  the  pages  of  Chateaubriand 
and  Bryant,  of  the  vastness  and  majesty  of  nature  as  exhib 
ited  in  the  solitudes  of  the  American  continent.^  Together  the 
five  tales  are  a  kind  of  prose  epic  of  the  settlement  of  the  new 
world,  of  the  conquest  of  man  over  nature/  And  the  charac 
ter  that  binds  them  into  one,  the  frontiersman  who  bridges 
the  gap  between  white  man  and  red,  is  a  rude  type  of  the 
independence,  energy,  honesty,  and  toleration,  that  have 
made  the  United  States  one  of  the  great  nations  of  the  earth. 
Of  Cooper's  tales  dealing  with  the  sea,  the  third  natural 
division  of  his  works,  five  are  noteworthy — The  Pilot,  The  Red 
Rover,  The  Water-Witch,  The  Two  Admirals,  and 
Wing-and-Wing.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  of  these 
that  by  common  consent  they  stand  at  the  head  of  romances 
of  their  kind.  Smollett,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  had 
drawn  sailors  to  the  life,  but  Cooper  was  virtually  the  creator 
of  the  sea- tale  as  a  form  of  modern  fiction.  He  wrote  The 
Pilot  just  after  the  appearance  of  Scott's  The  Pirate,  partly 
with  the  object  of  showing  how  such  a  theme  would  be  treated 
by  one  who,  unlike  Scott,  was  personally  familiar  with  life 
on  the  ocean,  and  who  had  not  to  "get  up"  his  technical 
knowledge  for  the  purpose.  The  difference  will  be  immedi 
ately  evident  to  any  one  who  reads  the  opening  chapters 
of  The  Pilot.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  whoever  takes  up 
those  chapters  for  the  first  time  will  speedily  forget  any 
critical  purpose  he  may  have  had.  The  gathering  storm 
and  darkness  on  the  Northumberland  coast,  the  wild  anchor 
age  in  a  strange  roadstead,  the  mysterious  pilot,  and  finally 
the  slow  working  of  the  frigate  out  to  sea  in  the  teeth  of  the 


88  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

gale,  arouse  precisely  those  feelings  of  terror  and  admiration 
that  it  is  one  of  the  chief  aims  of  romance  to  arouse.  Cooper 
differs  from  other  sea-romancers  by  making  the  reader  feel 
that  he  is  on  shipboard,  not  as  a  passenger  and  spectator 
merely,  but  as  one  of  the  crew,  with  an  exact  knowledge  of  all 
the  dangers  that  beset  him  from  wind  and  tide  and  rock  and 
shoal,  and  with  a  power  to  calculate  to  a  nicety  the  reliance 
to  be  placed  upon  every  force  arrayed  against  those  dangers, 
from  spring  of  mast  to  draught  of  keel.  It  is  the  nearest 
substitute  for  actual  experience  that  art  can  give.  We  can 
understand  how  the  old  seaman  to  whom  Cooper  read  the 
opening  chapters  of  The  Pilot  paced  the  floor  in  a  frenzy  of 
excitement.  This  story,  also,  be  it  said  in  passing,  contains  a 
character  that  has  been  much  admired — Long  Tom  Coffin, 
the  veteran  whaler  of  Nantucket. 

Cooper's  service  to  America  has  already  been  indicated. 

Never  in  the  recorded  history  of  the  world  has  pioneering  been 

carried  on  upon  the  same  great  scale  or  under 

Achievement. 

such  picturesque  circumstances  as  here  in  our  own 
country.  That  the  romance,  or  rather  the  epic,  of  this  great 
civilizing  movement  should  have  been  unwritten  is  a  calamity 
the  mind  refuses  to  picture.  And  without  Cooper's  work  it 
would  have  been  pitifully  crude  and  fragmentary.  Imagine, 
for  a  comparison,  the  loss  to  Western  Europe  if  Scott  had 
not  brought  his  genius  to  the  reconstruction  of  her  history 
and  legend.  And  our  loss  would  have  been  Europe's  also. 
It  is  easy  to  understand  why  Europe  seized  upon  Cooper's 
books  with  such  eagerness.  The  tales  suffered  nothing  by 
translation,  for  they  depended  not  upon  any  merits  of  style 
but  upon  the  story  they  had  to  tell.  And  it  was  just  then  a 
story  of  thrilling  interest  to  Europeans,  whose  eyes  were 
turned  curiously  upon  the  new  world.  Some  odd  results 
followed,  for  readers  did  not  always  stop  to  consider  that  they 
were  getting  only  a  partial  view.  Many  Europeans  thought 


COOPER  89 

that  life  in  America  meant  nothing  but  clearing  forests  and 
fighting  Indians,  and  in  out-of-the-way  corners  the  notion 
clings  even  yet.  But  Cooper  should  not  be  blamed.  It  is 
merely  our  misfortune  that  the  other  features  of  American 
life  found  no  such  adequate  portrayal.  If  we  had  had  our 
Dickens  and  our  Thackeray  as  well  as  our  Scott,  the  matter 
might  have  been  different. 

No  more  is  Cooper  morally  responsible  for  the  flood  of  yel 
low-backed  literature  that  followed  in  his  wake.  He  never 
panders  to  brutal  or  vicious  appetites.  His  heroes  never  hunt 
or  fight  for  pure  love  of  sport,  nor  lose  the  occasion  to  admin 
ister  a  sharp  reproof  to  one  who  does.  Natty  Bumppo  is  no 
"monster  of  goodness,"  but  beneath  his  uncouth  exterior  are 
to  be  found  most  of  the  moral  virtues.  It  is  inconceivable 
that  any  boy  could  be  fired,  by  reading  his  history,  with  a 
desire  to  go  out  and  scalp  Indians.  ^Cooper's  very  idealiza 
tion  of  the  Indian  character,  which  has  been  so  much  criti 
cised,  is  strong  evidence  of  his  own  faith  in  the  high  possibil 
ities  of  humanity.  Possibly  the  idealization  was  carried  too 
far,  though  we  are  not  so  sure  of  that  today.  At  the  most,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  it  was  so  only  in  the  case  of  one  or 
two  characters.  His  Indians  in  general  are  inhuman,  con 
scienceless  savages,  and  he  does  not  hesitate  to  make  them 
perpetrate  deeds  so  revolting  that  we  hurry  over  the  written 
passage  without  daring  to  look  back?  Le  Renard  Subtil  is 
more  than  a  complement  for  the  noble  Chingachgook  and  his 
ill-fated  son,  who  stand  out  as  marked  exceptions,  like  the 
wise  man  among  the  wild  beasts  of  Plato's  Republic. 

Yet  Cooper  had  many  faults.  In  most  points  of 
literary  art,  in  style,  plot,  and  dramatic  setting,  he  was  dis 
tinctly  inferior  to  Scott.  Scott  was  himself  no 
master  of  style;  yet  Cooper  occasionally  committed 
blunders  that  would  have  put  the  former  to  the  blush.  This 
was  partly  a  result  of  ignorance,  due  to  his  ragged  training 


90  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

and  partly  a  result  of  his  indifference  and  his  headlong  habits 
of  composition.  We  cannot  but  wish  that  some  kindly  ad 
viser  had  been  at  his  elbow  while  he  wrote,  to  save  him 
from  some  of  his  vices, — to  make  him,  for  example,  substitute 
man  or  person  for  individual,  and  woman  for  female,  or  to 
hint  that  there  is  neither  character-drawing  nor  humor  in 
such  distortions  as  Hurry  Harry's  and-bush  for  ambush  or 
Leather  Stocking's  references  to  "judgmatical"  actions  and 
"my-hog-guinea"  chairs.  His  plots  suffer  in  much  the 
same  way.  He  was  too  little  of  an  artist  and  too  much  of  a 
moralist  to  be  a  perfect  writer  of  tales.  He  was  everywhere 
concerned  for  moral  effect;  and  this,  together  with  his  lack  of 
humor,  led  him  into  constructing  absurd  situations,  thereby 
making  it  easy  for  a  humorist  like  Mark  Twain  to  poke  fun 
at  his  entire  method.*  His  warriors  often  harangue  on  the 
battlefield  like  Homer's.  Natty  Bumppo  will  give  an  Indian 
a  lesson  in  behavior  before  he  puts  a  bullet  through  his  heart, 
sublimely  indifferent  to  the  fact  that  the  Indian  cannot  under 
stand,  and  that  even  if  he  could  he  might  find  the  code  of  eti 
quette  different  in  Indian-heaven.  .But  more  serious  than  all 
this  is  Cooper's  weakness  in  character-drawing — a  weakness 
which  sets  him  once  more  below  Scott,  and  far  below  writers 
like  Balzac  and  Thackeray.  Of  course  we  must  remember 
that  he  was  writing  romances  and  not  character  novels;  yet 
it  is  a  pity  that,  aside  from  two  or  three  fairly  life-like  crea 
tions,  his  characters,  especially  his  women,  are  little  better 
than  puppets.  They  talk,  but  their  talk  is  pedantic  and 
labored.  Their  virtues  and  vices  are  hung  on  them  like  so 
much  wearing  apparel.^ 

But  while  these  things  condemn  Cooper,  as  a  literary 
artist,  to  an  inferior  rank,  they  cannot  be  held  to  condemn 
him  utterly.  Even  his  style  is  not  so  bad  as  it  is  sometimes 
painted :  so  long  as  he  is  writing  narrative  and  not  dialogue 

*"Cooper's  Literary  Offences,"  North  American  Review,  July,  1895. 


COOPER  91 

it  is  really  remarkable  for  firmness  and  ease.   Moreover,  in  his 

best  work,  his  minor  defects  in  this  respect  and  others,  are 

to  a   great  extent   obscured  by  his   virtues — by 

Greatness.  &  ;  .  J 

the  absorbing  interest  of  his  thrilling  situations, 
by  the  commanding  presence  of  his  able-bodied  and  large- 
hearted  heroes,  and  by  the  poetical  glamour  which,  through 
his  real  genius  for  description,  he  has  succeeded  in  throwing 
over  nearly  every  scene.  Let  two  pages,  taken  from  the 
quietest  part  of  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  speak  for  some 
qualities  of  his  art : 

While  Heyward  and  his  companions  hesitated  to  approach  a  building 
so  decayed,  Hawkeye  and  the  Indians  entered  within  the  low  walls, 
not  only  without  fear,  but  with  obvious  interest.  While  the  former 
surveyed  the  ruins,  both  internally  and  externally,  with  the  curiosity 
of  one  whose  recollections  were  reviving  at  each  moment,  Chingachgook 
related  to  his  son,  in  the  language  of  the  Delawares,  and  with  the  pride 
of  the  conqueror,  the  brief  history  of  the  skirmish  which  had  been 
fought  in  his  youth  in  that  secluded  spot.  A  strain  of  melancholy, 
however,  blended  with  his  triumph,  rendering  his  voice,  as  usual,  soft 
and  musical. 

In  the  meantime  the  sisters  gladly  dismounted,  and  prepared  to 
enjoy  their  halt  in  the  coolness  of  the  evening,  and  in  a  security  which 
they  believed  nothing  but  the  beasts  of  the  forest  could  invade. 

"Would  not  our  resting  place  have  been  more  retired,  my  worthy 
friend,"  demanded  the  more  vigilant  Duncan,  perceiving  that  the 
scout  had  already  finished  his  short  survey,  "had  we  chosen  a  spot 
less  known  and  one  more  rarely  visited  than  this?" 

"Few  live  who  know  the  block-house  was  ever  raised,"  was  the 
slow  and  musing  answer;  "'tis  not  often  that  books  are  made,  and 
narratives  written,  of  such  a  scrimmage  as  was  here  fou't  atween  the 
Mohicans  and  the  Mohawks,  in  a  war  of  their  own  waging.  I  was 
then  a  younker  and  went  out  with  the  Delawares.  because  I  knew 
they  were  a  scandalized  and  wronged  race.  Forty  days  and  forty 
nights  did  the  imps  crave  our  blood  around  this  pile  of  logs,  which  I 
designed  and  partly  reared,  being,  as  you'll  remember,  no  Indian 
myself,  but  a  man  without  a  cross.  The  Delawares  lent  themselves 
to  the  work  and  we  made  it  good,  ten  to  twenty,  until  our  numbers 
were  nearly  equal,  and  then  we  sallied  out  upon  the  hounds,  and  not 


92  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

0 

a  man  of  them  ever  got  back  to  tell  the  fate  of  his  party.  Yes,  yes; 
I  was  then  young  and  new  to  the  sight  of  blood;  and  not  relishing  the 
thought  that  creatures  who  had  spirits  like  myself  should  lay  on  the 
naked  ground,  to  be  torn  asunder  by  beasts  or  to  bleach  in  the  rains, 
I  buried  the  dead  with  my  own  hands,  under  that  very  little  hillock 
where  you  have  placed  yourselves;  and  no  bad  seat  does  it  make, 
neither,  though  it  be  raised  by  the  bones  of  mortal  men." 

Heyward  and  the  sisters  arose,  on  the  instant,  from  the  grassy 
sepulchre;  nor  could  the  two  latter,  notwithstanding  the  terrific  scenes 
they  had  so  recently  passed  through,  entirely  suppress  an  emotion 
of  natural  horror,  when  they  found  themselves  in  such  familiar  contact 
with  the  grave  of  the  dead  Mohawks.  The  gray  light,  the  gloomy 
little  area  of  dark  grass,  surrounded  by  its  border  of  brush,  beyond 
which  the  pines  rose,  in  breathing  silence,  apparently,  into  the  very 
clouds,  and  the  deathlike  stillness  of  the  vast  forest,  were  all  in  unison 
to  deepen  such  a  sensation. 

"They  are  gone,  and  they  are  harmless,"  continued  Hawkeye, 
waving  his  hand,  with  a  melancholy  smile,  at  their  manifest  alarm; 
"they'll  never  shout  the  war-whoop  nor  strike  a  blow  with  the  tomahawk 
again!  And  of  all  those  who  aided  in  placing  them  where  they  lie, 
Chingachgook  and  I  only  are  living!  The  brothers  and  family  of  the 
Mohican  formed  our  war  party;  arid  you  see  before  you  all  that  are  now 
left  of  his  race." 

The  eyes  of  the  listeners  involuntarily  sought  the  forms  of  the 
Indians,  with  a  compassionate  interest  in  their  desolate  fortune.  Their 
dark  persons  were  still  to  be  seen  within  the  shadows  of  the  block-house, 
the  son  listening  to  the  relation  of  his  father  with  that  sort  of  intenseness 
which  would  be  created  by  a  narrative  that  redounded  so  much  to  the 
honor  of  those  whose  names  he  had  long  revered  for  their  courage  and 
savage  virtues. 

"I  had  thought  the  Dela wares  a  pacific  people,"  said  Duncan, 
"and  that  they  never  waged  war  in  person;  trusting  the  defence  of 
their  lands  to  those  very  Mohawrks  that  you  slew!" 

"Tis  true  in  part,"  returned  the  scout,  "and  yet,  at  the  bottom, 
'tis  a  wicked  lie.  Such  a  treaty  was  made  in  ages  gone  by,  through 
the  deviltries  of  the  Dutchers,  who  wished  to  disarm  the  natives  that 
had  the  best  right  to  the  country,  where  they  had  settled  themselves. 
The  Mohicans,  though  a  part  of  the  same  nation,  having  to  deal  with 
the  English,  never  entered  into  the  silly  bargain,  but  kept  to  their 
manhood;  as  in  truth  did  the  Delawares,  when  their  eyes  were  opened 
to  their  folly.  You  see  before  you  a  chief  of  the  great  Mohican  Saga- 


EARLY   POETRY  93 

mores!  Once  his  family  could  chase  their  deer  over  tracks  of  country 
wider  than  that  which  belongs  to  the  Albany  •  Patterroon,  without 
crossing  brook  or  hill  that  was  not  their  own;  but  what  is  left  to  their 
descendant!  He  may  find  his  six  feet  of  earth  when  God  chooses,  and 
keep  it  in  peace,  perhaps,  if  he  has  a  friend  who  will  take  the  pains  to 
sink  his  head  so  low  that  the  plowshares  cannot  reach  it!" 

Cooper's  place  is  clear  as  a  writer  in  the  field  of  strictly 
legitimate  romance — the  romance  of  real  life,  of  stirring  ad 
venture  and  daring  deeds,  made  romantic  simply  by  their  in 
accessibility  to  most  men  at  most  times.  His  kinship  is  with 
Scott  and  Stevenson  and  all  large,  healthy,  out-of-door  na 
tures.  Moreover,  he  has  some  claim  to  consideration  among 
writers  of  universal  interest  in  virtue  of  the  elemental  passions 
with  which  he  deals,  for  the  fashions  of  human  heroism  do  not 
change.  Had  his  insight  and  his  art  been  equal  to  his  ideal 
izing  imagination,  he  would  have  been  second  to  no  writer  of 
modern  romance.  His  old  trapper  stands  upright  in  the 
death-hour  and  answers  "Here"  as  Colonel  Newcome 
answers  "Adsum!"  David  Gamut  goes  forth  to  battle  like 
David  of  old,  with  a  sling  in  his  hand  and  a  song  on  his  lips. 
The  mourning  of  the  Delawares  over  the  body  of  Uncas 
reminds  us  of  the  mourning  of  the  Trojans  over  the  body  of 
Hector.  Leather-Stocking  straps  the  aged  Chingachgook  on 
his  back  and  carries  him  out  of  the  forest-fire  as  J^neas 
carried  Anchises  out  of  burning  Troy.  Indeed,  the  funda 
mental  conception  of  Leather-Stocking  and  his  rifle  Kill-deer 
suggests  a  comparison  with  Odysseus  and  his  bow  or  King 
Arthur  and  his  good  sword  Excalibur.  But  we  may  not 
press  the  comparison.  We  can  only  deplore  the  fatal  defects 
that  marred  a  genius  which  might  otherwise  have  set  at  the 
beginning  of  our  literature  an  epic  worthy  to  stand  by  the 
epics  of  the  old  world. 

EARLY  POETRY 

That  the  genius  of  poetry  in  America  was  even  more  slow 
to  respond  to  the  creative  impulse  than  the  genius  of  prose 


94  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

romance,  is  made  evident  by  the  story  of  the  publication  of 
Bryant's  Thanatopsis.  When,  in  1817,  the  manuscript  of 
that  poem  appeared  in  the  office  of  the  North  American 
Review  of  Boston  —  a  magazine  then  but  two  years  old,  yet 
already  a  criterion  of  literary  taste  —  it  caused  no  little 
commotion.  Mr.  Dana,  the  most  sagacious  of  the  young 
editors,  declared  that  it  could  not  have  been  written  in  Ameri 
ca,  and  would  consent  to  publish  it  only  upon  the  mistaken 
assurance  of  his  colleague  that  Dr.  Bryant,  the  poet's  father, 
then  at  Boston  as  senator  to  the  state  legislature,  was  its 
author.  Nor  was  Mr.  Dana's  caution  unjustified.  It  is  true 
that  nothing  could  be  greatly  better  in  its  modest  way  than 
Freneau's  Wild  Honeysuckle,  written  long  before,  but  it  is 
also  true  that  that  lyric  was,  as  one  of  its  admirers  has  called 
it,  little  more  than  a  "first  stammer."*  American  poetry 
became  fairly  articulate  only  with  Thanatopsis.  But  the 
young  author  of  1817  was  still  quite  unknown  to  fame,  and 
the  part  that  he  was  to  play  in  American  poetry  reaches  so 
far  through  the  nineteenth  century  that  it  will  be  well  here, 
before  considering  him,  to  glance  at  a  few  of  his  contempo 
raries  whose  work  was  associated  exclusively  with  the  early 
decades. 

There  is  perhaps  little  to  keep  alive  in  literary  history  the 
names  of  such  men  as  Washington  Allston  and  John  Pierpont 
Washington  except  the  fact  that  they  published  collections  of 
poetry  before  Bryant.  Allston,  who  is  remem- 
bered  still  as  a  painter,  studied  art  abroad,  and 
*66'  had  the  good  fortune  while  at  Rome  to  become 
intimate  with  Coleridge.  At  Boston,  where  he  resided,  he 
exercised  a  deep  influence  upon  early  art  and  culture  in  New 
England.  He  published  a  volume  of  refined  verse,  The 
Sylphs  of  the  Seasons,  in  1813.  Pierpont,  who  was  a  Unitar 
ian  clergyman  of  Connecticut,  published  several  volumes  of 

*  Greenough  White:     Philosophy  of  American  Literature. 


Jon?,Pier~ 


EARLY   POETRY  95 

poems,  the  first  in  1816.  Many  of  his  verses,  such  as 
Warren's  Address  to  the  American  Soldiers  ("Stand!  the 
ground's  your  own,  my  braves!"),  had  a  touch  of  grandil 
oquence  in  them  that  made  them  favorites  for  recitation. 
The  spirit  of  the  Revolution  survived  long  in  poetry  of  this 
nature. 

Joseph  Rodman  Drake  and  Fitz-Greene  Halleck,  whose 

names  are  inseparably  associated,  and  who  belonged  to  the 

New  York  group  of  writers,  are  two  minor  poets 

Joseph  Rod-  . 

man  Drake,  still  held  in  something  like  ariectionate  remem 
brance.  Drake,  the  younger,  showed  perhaps  the 
greater  promise,  but  he  diedt  of  consumption  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five.  He  was  a  youth  of  many  graces  of  both  body 
and  mind,  who  wrote  verses  as  a  bird  sings,  for  the  pure  joy. 
of  it.  His  fame,  as  well  as  Halleck's,  was  made  by  what  was 
locally  known  as  "The  Croakers" — a  series  of  forty  poems 
contributed  by  them  in  1819  to  the  New  York  Evening  Post, 
and  signed  "Croaker  &  Co."  Among  these  was  The  Amer 
ican  Flag  ("When  Freedom  from  her  mountain  height"), 
probably  the  most  widely  known  of  our  patriotic  poems, 
though  it  is  too  declamatory  in  tone  to  be  given  high  praise. 
The  last  four  lines  were  written  by  Halleck : — 

"Forever  float  that  standard  sheet! 

Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us? — 
With  freedom's  soil  beneath  our  feet, 

And  freedom's  banner  streaming  o'er  us!" 

They  are  not  made  readily  clear  even  by  careful  punctuation, 
and  it  is  a  pity  that  the  finer  lines  of  Drake's  were  not  allowed 
to  stand,  in  spite  of  their  concluding  hyperbole: — 

"As  fixed  as  yonder  orb  divine, 

That  saw  thy  bannered  blaze  unfurled, 
Shall  thy  proud  stars  resplendent  shine, 
The  guard  and  glory  of  the  world." 


96  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

Drake's  longest  poem  is  The  Culprit  Fay,  which  was 
published  in  a  volume  of  selected  poems  ten  years  after  his 
death.*  It  is  the  story  of  a  fairy  who  is  compelled  to  do 
penance  for  his  sinful  love  of  a  mortal.  The  scene  is  laid  in 
the  highlands  of  the  Hudson.  It  is  an  airy  work  of  fancy  in 
the  manner  of  Scott  and  Moore,  whose  poems  were  just  then 
at  the  height  of  popularity.  Like  their  poems,  too,  it 
undeniably  owes  much  to  Coleridge's  Christabel  in  melody 
and  imagery,  the  two  qualities  into  which  most  of  the  merits 
of  Drake's  poem  resolve  themselves : — 

"The  stars  are  on  the  moving  stream. 
And  fling,  as  its  ripples  gently  flow, 
A  burnished  length  of  wavy  beam 
In  an  eel-like,  spiral  line  below; 
The  winds  are  whist  and  the  owl  is  still, 

The  bat  in  the  shelvy  rock  is  hid, 
And  naught  is  heard  on  the  lonely  hill 
But  the  cricket's  chirp  and  the  answer  shrill 

Of  the  gauze- winged  katydid, 
And  the  plaint  of  the  waiting  whip-poor-will. 
Who  moans  unseen,  and  ceaseless  sings, 

Ever  a  note  of  wail  and  woe, 
Till  morning  spreads  her  rosy  wings, 

And  earth  and  sky  in  her  glances  glow." 

Halleck  was  not  of  New  York  City  by  birth,  but  went 
thither  from  his  Connecticut  home  in  1811,  and  spent  nearly 
forty  years  there  as  an  accountant,  writing  verse  between 

*  The  poem  was  written  hastily,  and  grew  out  of  a  conversation  with  Cooper  and  Halleck 
over  the  possibility  of  giving  old  world  romance  a  new  world  setting.  The  date  commonly 
given  is  1819.  Halleck's  biographer  produces  what  appears  to  be  incontrovertible  evidence 
that  the  date  should  be  1816.  Yet  Cooper  did  not  move  to  the  neighborhood  of  New  York 
City  until  1817.  Moreover,  the  poem  contains  these  lines: — 

"Joy  to  thee,  Fay!  thy  task  is  done, 
Thy  wings  are  pure,  for  the  gem  is  won." 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  these  lines  were  written  before  the  appearance  of  Moore's  Lalla 
Rookh,  which  was  published  in  the  spring  of  1817,  and  which  has,  at  the  conclusion  of  Paradise 
and  the  Peri,  these  lines: — 

"Joy,  joy  forever! — my  task  is  done-^- 
The  Gates  are  passed,  and  Heaven  is  won!" 

Besides,  the  tasks  set  the  culprit  Fay  are  not  unlike  the  tasks  set  the  fallen  Peri. 


EARLY   POETRY  97 

whiles  when  the  mood  prompted.  He  rarely  wrote  with  suffi 
cient  seriousness  for  entire  success,  some  caprice  of  humor 

or  cynicism  frequently  leading  him  to  lower  the 
Haiieck,  tone  and  spoil  the  effect  of  an  otherwise  fine  poem. 

His  best  work  was  done  in  his  youth  when,  like 
Drake,  he  came  under  the  spell  of  the  popular  British  poets, 
in  his  case  particularly  Campbell  and  Byron.  Fanny,  his 
longest  poem,  which  belongs  to  the  same  year  as  his  Croaker 
contributions,  and  which  was  written  in  Byron's  satirical 
vein,  though  without  any  of  the  abiding  elements  of  Byron's 
work,  was  immensely  popular  in  its  day.  A  tender  monody 
on  Burns  and  a  spirited  apostrophe  to  Red  Jacket,  chief  of  the 
Tuscaroras,  also  deserve  mention.  But  Halleck  lives  for  us 
in  two  poems  only — the  martial  Marco  Bozzaris,  celebrating 
the  deeds  and  death  of  that  Greek  patriot  in  the  defence  of 
liberty  in  1823,  which  left  him 

" Freedom's  now,  and  Fame's, 


One  of  the  few,  the  immortal  names 
That  were  not  born  to  die;" 

and  the  little  elegy  of  half  a  dozen  stanzas  written  after  the 
death  of  his  friend  Drake,  with  the  frequently  quoted 
prayer: — 

"Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 

Friend  of  my  better  days! 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

Richard  Henry  Dana,  a  critic  and  journalist,  who  was  best 
known  in  the  early  twenties  for  his  short-lived  Idle  Man,  to 

which  both  Bryant  and  Allston  contributed,  was 
fy'sT-'i??^'  another  writer  who  fell  under  the  English  romantic 

influence.  His  most  ambitious  piece  of  verse, 
The  Buccaneers,  a  poem  of  more  than  one  hundred  stanzas, 
was  published  in  1827.  It  is  a  wild  tale  of  conscience  and 


98  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

remorse  against  a  background  of  high-sea  piracy  and  murder, 
with  supernatural  accessories  of  a  burning  ship  and  a  spectre 
horse.  It  has  elements  of  fascination,  but  is  an  uneven  pro 
duction;  there  are  many  bad  lines,  and  the  good  lines  have 
always  the  disadvantage  of  suggesting  the  Ancient  Mariner. 
One  short  lyric  of  Dana's  is  worth  preserving — The  Little 
Beach  Bird,  beginning, 

"Thou  little  bird,  them  dweller  by  the  sea, 
Why  takest  them  its  melancholy  voice, 
And  with  that  boding  cry 
Along  the  waves  dost  fly? 
Oh  rather,  bird,  with  me 

Through  the  fair  land  rejoice!" 

Nathaniel  Parker  Willis,  though  somewhat  younger  than 
the  foregoing  poets,  may  very  properly  be  considered  in  this 

place,  because  he  helped  to  perpetuate  at  New 
1806118671!8'  York  the  tradition ,  established  there  by  Irving, 

Paulding,  Halleck,  and  Drake — a  tradition  which 
turned  journalism  and  literature  into  something  of  a  social 
pastime.  Willis  came  from  Portland,  Maine;  was  a  graduate 
of  Yale  and  an  early  contributor  to  the  Youth's  Companion, 
which  his  father  had  founded;  founded  several  magazines 
himself;  was  associated  with  G.  P.  Morris  on  the  New  York 
Mirror  and  the  Home  Journal;  published  poems  and  letters 
of  travel  (Sketches,  1827,  Pencillings  by  the  Way,  1835);  and 
was  once  led,  by  reporting  some  social  and  political  gossip, 
into  a  conventional  and  bloodless  duel.  He  had  a  taste  both 
for  society  and  for  rural  life,  and  spent  his  later  years  at  his 
beautiful  home,  "Idlewild,"  in  the  Highlands  of  the  Hudson, 
dying,  however,  in  the  pursuit  of  his  profession,  which  had 
become  at  last  anything  but  a  pastime.  He  was  for  many 
years  a  kind  of  literary  autocrat,  standing  at  the  head  of 
those  sentimental  "Knickerbocker"  writers  who,  if  we  omit 
Bryant  and  Poe,  dominated  New  York  letters  in  the  palmy 


EARLY   POETRY  99 

days  of  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  before  the  appearance 
of  the  manlier  poetry  of  Taylor  and  Stoddard.  Willis  had 
many  talents,  but  employed  them  mostly  upon  common 
place  and  even  frivolous  themes,  where  his  quick  percep 
tion,  wit,  sentiment,  and  grace,  shone  to  the  best  advantage. 
He  struck  his  highest  note  in  the  poem,  Unseen  Spirits  ("The 
shadows  lay  along  Broadway").  His  sacred  poems,  such  as 
Absalom  and  Lazarus  and  Mary,  are  composed  in  a  smooth, 
well-sustained  blank  verse,  and  had  at  one  time  wide  popular 
ity.  But  the  vogue  of  Willis  passed  with  the  coming  of  a 
more  strenuous  national  life  and  sentiment,  and  now  we  have 
little  more  than  his  memory,  which,  like  the  golden  tress  of 
Melanie,  one  of  his  poetic  heroines, 

"Floats  back  upon  the  summer  gale." 

To  search  further  among  the  professed  poets  of  the  first 
third  of  the  century  is  only  to  revive,  rather  uselessly,  such 
Mrs.  Brooks,  names  as  that  of  Maria  Gowen  Brooks,  who  was 
jlG7percivai, once  compared  with  Mrs.  Browning,  and  whose 
1795-1856.  sentimental  and  highly  colored  Oriental  tale  of 
Zophiel,  or  the  Bride  of  Seven  (1825-1833)  won  for  her  from 
Sou  they  the  sobriquet  of  "Maria  del  Occident";  or  that  of 
James  Gates  Percival,  who  was  sometimes  called  by  courtesy 
a  scholar,  and  who,  among  his  voluminous  verse,  left  one  or 
two  poems,  like  The  Coral  Grove,  of  an  undeniably 
1*779-1843'.  distinctive  charm.  Rather  better  worth  record- 
i792"-i8§2?Cl  ing,  it  seems,  are  the  names  of  a  few  who,  not 
f7K8420rth'otherwise  thought  of  as  poets,  chanced  to  write 
18021  ijJX*18'  a  single  poem  or  song  of  sufficiently  genuine  feel- 
i779li863.re'  ing  and  melody  to  give  it  more  than  a  fleeting 
existence.  Francis  Scott  Key,  a  lawyer  of  Wash 
ington,  wrote  The  Star-Spangled  Banner  on  the  occasion  of 
the  bombardment  of  Fort  McHenry  by  the  British  in  1814. 
John  Howard  Payne,  the  dramatist,  won  lasting  fame  with 


100  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

his  Home,  Sweet  Home,  sung  first  at  the  Covent  Garden  The 
atre,  London,  as  a  part  of  his  opera,  Clari,  the  Maid  of  Milan 
(1823) .  Samuel  Woodworth,  a  journalist  of  New  York,  wrote 
The  Old  Oaken  Bucket  (1826);  George  P.  Morris,  a  younger 
associate  of  Woodworth's,  was  the  author  of  My  Mother's 
Bible  and  Woodman,  Spare  that  Tree.  Dr.  Clement  C.  Moore, 
a  Greek  and  Hebrew  scholar  of  New  York,  was  the  author  of 
R.  H.  Wilde,  that  children's  classic,  founded  upon  an  old  Dutch 
E^apinknly.legend,  A  Visit  from  St.  Nicholas  ("  'Twas  the 
1802-1828.  'night  bef Qre  Christmas") .  In  the  South,  Richard 
Henry  Wilde  of  Georgia,  also  a  scholar,  echoed  the  melodies  of 
his  native  Ireland  in  his  stanzas  (about  1815),  My  Life  is  Like 
the  Summer  Rose;  while  the  southern  romantic  and  chivalric 
spirit  was  fairly  represented  by  Edward  Coate  Pinkney,  a 
young  midshipman,  who  printed  at  Baltimore  in  1825  a  small 
volume  of  poems  containing  the  one  beginning, 

"I  fill  this  cup  to  one  made  up  of  loveliness  alone." 

These  were  the  bardlings  and  songsters.  We  turn  now  to 
the  one  man  born  in  America  before  1800  whose  call  to  poetry 
was  both  high  and  steadfastly,  consistently  honored. 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT,  1794-1878 

William  Cullen  Bryant  virtually  belongs,  like  Irving  and 
Cooper,  to  New  York,  though  he  was  a  native  of  New  Eng 
land  and  wrote  his  earliest  poetry  there.     He  was 
/  born  in  the  autumn  of  1794  in  the  little  town  of 

Cummington,  where  the  north  fork  of  the  Westfield  River 
goes  "brawling  over  a  bed  of  loose  stones  in  a  very  narrow 
valley"  in  the  semi-mountainous  region  of  western  Massa 
chusetts.  He  was  the  second  of  seven  children.  His  ances 
tors  had  been  Americans  for  generations,  several  of  them 
having  been  among  the  passengers  of  the  Mayflower.  His 
father  was  a  physician  and  surgeon,  of  abilities  quite  beyond 


BRYANT  101 

the  small  country  practice  with  which  he  contented  himself; 
he  also  served  several  terms  in  the  state  legislature.  His 
mother  was  a  model  housewife,  equally  adept,  as  her  diary 
shows,  at  "teaching  Cullen  his  letters"  and  "making  him  a 
pair  of  breeches." 

The  boy's  early  schooling  was  carried  on  at  home  and  at 
the  district  school.  At  home  he  had  the  use  of  a  library 
exceptionally  fine  for  that  time  and  place,  containing,  as  it 
did,  most  of  the  world's  classics  from  Plutarch  to  Shake 
speare,  together  with  such  English  classics  as  Gibbon,  John 
son,  and  Wordsworth.  His  outdoor  sports  were  many, — 
trout-fishing,  squirrel-hunting,  and  snow-balling;  and  there 
were  the  time-honored  devices  for  turning  work  into  play 
at  the  seasons  of  making  maple-syrup  and  cider,  and  husking 
corn.  Barn-raisings  and  singing-schools  varied  the  diver 
sions.  Few  of  these  things,  however,  found  their  way  into 
young  Cullen's  verses — for  he  began  to  write  verses  in  his 
ninth  year.  Boy-like,  he  was  ambitious  of  greater  themes 
and  sought  exercise  in  paraphrasing  the  Book  of  Job,  or  in 
celebrating  an  eclipse  in  turgid  lines : — 

"How  awfully  sublime  and  grand  to  see 
The  lamp  of  Day  wrapped  in  Obscurity!" 

Of  course,  in  this  juvenile  verse,  the  sun's  ray  is  "genial," 
birds  "sit  upon  the  spray,"  "stillness  broods,"  and  so  forth. 
It  is  difficult  now  to  understand  how  people  of  taste  could 
ever  delight  in  such  circumlocutions  as  "the  lamp  of  day"  or 
such  stately  phraseology  as  "to  see  the  sun  remove  behind  the 
moon."  But  so  it  was.  The  English  poetic  models  upon 
which  Bryant  formed  his  taste  were  full  of  this  sort  of  thing, 
and  he  naturally  caught  the  manner.  Unfortunately,  it  was 
a  manner  irom  which  he  never,  even  in  his  best  work,  entirely 
escaped.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  wrote  a  poem  that  was 
published  at  Boston  (1808)  in  pamphlet  form.  It  was  a  polit- 


102  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

ical  satire  in  five  hundred  lines,  called  The  Embargo,  and  was 
aimed  at  the  unpopular  policy  of  Jefferson's  administration  in 
closing  our  ports  to  foreign  commerce  because  of  certain  dis 
putes  with  Great  Britain.  In  it  the  President  was  held  up  to 
scorn  along  with  Error  and  Faction  and  other  monsters  that 
made  "injured  Commerce  weep."  There  was  sufficient 
reason  why  the  poem  should  be  popular  then,  though  there  is 
no  reason  why  it  should  be  remembered  now  except  as  the 
work  of  a  very  precocious  little  boy. 

He  was  sent  away  to  an  uncle  to  learn  Latin;  then  to  a 
minister  in  a  neighboring  township,  where  he  paid  a  dollar  a 
week  for  his  bodily  and  mental  fare,  the  former  chiefly  bread 
and  milk,  the  latter  Greek  and  mathematics.  In  the  fall 
of  1810  he  went  to  Williams  College,  where  he  remained 
seven  months.  This  completed  his  schooling.  He  made 
some  preparation  for  continuing  his  studies  at  Yale, 
but  his  father  was  unable  to  send  him  there,  and  he  had 
to  content  himself  with  chanting  Greek  choruses  among 
the  Hampshire  hills,  or  making  his  own  first  essays  at 
poetry. 

It  was  during  a  ramble  among  these  hills  in  the  autumn  of 

1811,  when  he  was  not  yet  quite  seventeen  years  old,  that  the 

conception  of  Thanatopsis  ("Vision  of  Death") 

^Thanatop-    came  to  ^{m:>  an(j  the  composition  immediately 

followed.     He  had  been  reading  Blair's  poem,  The 

'    Grave,  and  certain  verses  of  Kirke  White's  and  Southey's, 

and  these  may  have  helped  to  suggest  the  sombre  theme 

of  his  own  poem;  the  influence  of  Wordsworth's   Tintern 

Abbey  is  also  apparent;  but  the  immediate  inspiration  came 

from  the  autumnal  scene  around  him,  the  subdued  colors  of 

earth  and  sky,  the  bare  branches,  the  fallen  leaves,  and  the 

decaying  trunks  of  the  forest  trees.     He  went  home  and, 

sitting  at  his  father's  desk,  began  to  write  in  the  middle  of 

aline; 


BRYANT  103 

"Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee 
The  all-beholding  sun  shall  see  no  more 
In  all  his  course." 

He  broke  off,  almost  as  abruptly,  in  the  middle  of  the  forty- 
ninth  line,  and  left  the  poem  in  a  pigeon-hole  of  the  desk. 
There  it  was  afterward  found  by  his  father,  who  had  always 
taken  a  sympathetic  interest  in  his  poetical  exercises,  and  who 
realized  at  once  that  this  was  a  good  poem,  though  it  is  doubt 
ful  whether  even  a  father's  pride  enabled  him  to  realize  just 
how  good.  He  at  least  thought  it  worthy  to  be  offered  to  the 
North  American  Review,  with  the  result  described  earlier  in 
this  chapter.  It  is  interesting  to  turn  to  that  old  number  of 
the  Review  and  read  the  poem  in  its  first  form.  We  miss  the 
familiar  beginning; — 

"To  him  who  in  the  love  of  Nature  holds 
Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language." 

We  miss  also  the  homily  at  the  close,  which,  although  not  the 
best  part  of  the  poem,  is  the  most  frequently  quoted:— 

"So  live,  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm,  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 
Thou  go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon,  but,  sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

These  additions  were  made  when  Bryant  published  his 
first  thin  volume  of  poems  in  1821,  and  a  few  further  changes    / 
were  made  afterward.     But  the  central  theme,  the  univer-v 
sality  of  death,  was  fully  set  forth  in  the  original  form  and 
required  no  changes  to  make  it  complete.     This  youth  in  his 
seventeenth  year  had  quite  unconsciously  produced  a  poem 


104  THE   NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

which  none  of  the  brilliant  galaxy  of  poets  then  ascendant  in 
England  would  have  been  ashamed  to  own.  If  it  be  true,  as 
we  have  said,  that  no  American  boy  can  afford  not  to  read 
Benjamin  Franklin's  Autobiography,  it  is  almost  equally  true 
that  no  one  who  cares  to  cultivate  a  love  of  the  best  in  poetry 
can  afford  not  to  learn  by  heart  the  eighty-one  lines  of 
Thanatopsis. 

Of  course  the  anonymous,  fragmentary-looking  bit  of 
verse  brought  no  immediate  fame  to  Bryant,  who  was  indus 
triously  preparing  himself  for  the  very  practical  life  he  was 
destined  to  lead.  He  read  law,  and  in  1815  was  licensed  to 
practice.  The  celebrated  lines  To  a  Waterfowl  were  the  out 
come  of  an  incident  of  this  stage  in  his  career.  He  was  walk 
ing  to  a  neighboring  village  with  the  object  of  finding  a  place 
to  open  a  law  office,  and  chanced  to  observe  the  flight  of  a 
lone  bird  across  the  evening  sky. 

"  Whither,  midst  falling  dew, 

While  glow  the  heavens  with  the  last  steps  of  day, 
Far,  through  their  rosy  depths  dost  thou  pursue 
Thy  solitary  way." 

He  fancied  he  saw  in  this  uncompanioned  voyage  along 
"that  pathless  coast,  the  desert  and  illimitable  air,"  a  likeness 
to  his  own  situation  and,  full  of  the  forebodings  natural  to  a 
young  man  when  first  confronting  the  world,  he  sought  to 
derive  from  it  consolation: — 

"He  who  from  zone  to  zone 

Guides  through  the  boundless  sky  thy  certain  flight, 
In  the*long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone 
Will  lead  my  steps  aright." 

After  some  years  of  practice  at  Great  Barrington,  and 
after  his  marriage,  which  had  meanwhile  followed  upon  the 
lyrical  prelude  of  "Oh  fairest  of  the  rural  maids,"  Bryant 
determined  to  abandon  the  law,  partly  because  of  his  disgust 


BRYANT  105 

at  learning  that  in  that  profession  mere  technicalities  could 
sometimes  defeat  justice,  and  partly  because  he  longed  for 
larger  opportunities. 

In  1825  he  went  to  New  York  and  entered  upon  what 
proved  to  be  his  lifelong  career — journalism.     He  succeeded 
rather  slowly  at  first,  but  after  his  connection  with 
Career.  the  Evening  Post,  and  especially  after  his  succes 

sion  to  the  chief  editorship  of  that  journal,  his 
fortunes  rapidly  mended.  He  not  only  made  the  Evening 
Post  a  newspaper  of  the  highest  rank,  but  by  the  purity  of  his 
life  and  ideals,  and  the  courage  with  which  he  always  espoused 
what  he  believed  to  be  the  right,  he  sensibly  elevated  the 
somewhat  low  tone  of  the  American  press,  and  exercised  a 
profound  and  wholesome  influence  upon  American  politics 
and  public  life.  He  lived  and  acted  in  the  full  conviction 
that,  in  his  own  words, 

"Truth,  crushed  to  earth,  shall  rise  again; 

The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers; 
But  Error,  wounded,  writhes  in  pain, 
And  dies  among  his  worshipers." 

For  fifty  years  he  faithfully  performed  the  exacting  duties 
that  fell  to  him,  finding  change  and  rest  in  half  a  dozen 
voyages  to  Europe,  or  in  such  hours  of  retirement  as  he  could 
snatch  at  the  old  Cummington  homestead,  or  at  the  beautiful 
suburban  residence  he  had  provided  for  himself  at  Roslyn, 
Long  Island.  From  time  to  time  he  gathered  his  fugitive 
verses  and  published  a  slender  volume.  Late  in  life,  too, 
he  sought  relief  from  more  strenuous  duties  by  translating 
the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  into  the  blank  verse  of  which  he 
rightly  felt  himself  to  be  a  master.  The  translations  are  a 
little  cold,  but  for  faithfulness  and  majesty  they  rank  among 
the  best  that  have  been  made.  These  were  finished  in  1871. 
For  nearly  seven  years  more  the  poet's  mental  activity  kept 


106  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

pace  with  his  bodily  vigor,  until  the  fataj  fall,  in  his  eighty- 
fourth  year,  on  the  stone  steps  of  General  Wilson's  house, 
just  after  he  had  delivered  a  public  address  on  Mazzini,  in 
the  hot  sun  at  Central  Park.  He  died  after  two  weeks  of 
semi-consciousness  and  was  buried  at  Roslyn. 

Bryant's  prose,  although  several  volumes,  consisting 
chiefly  of  occasional  addresses,  have  been  preserved,  holds  no 
Th  M  rea^  P^ace  m  our  literature.  It  was  through  his 

Poetthe  poetry  that  he  won  his  wide  audience,  and  through 
the  high  quality  of  it  only,  never  from  its  range  or 
quantity.  His  poems  are  all  short — the  merely  necessary 
and  spontaneous  expression  of  a  poetic  spirit,  bound  for  the 
most  part  to  a  prosaic  life.  He  never  attempted  anything  so 
large  as  an  epic  or  a  drama.  Even  in  the  lyric  field  he  con- 
\J  fined  himself  to  simple  subjects  and  long-tried  measures,  mak 
ing  no  experiments  in  the  multitude  of  forms  and  moods  with 
which  our  lyric  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been 
enriched.  The  sensuous  warmth  of  Keats,  the  ethereal 
brightness  of  Shelley,  were  not  in  his  manner.  The  Tenny- 
sonian  idyll  and  ballad  were  quite  as  much  beyond  his  reach 
as  the  ballade  and  the  rondeau  that  came  in  with  his  old  age. 
His  employment  of  the  Spenserian  stanza  is  not  happy. 
His  few  sonnets  are  irregular  and  ineffective.  Yet,  by  such 
simple  magic  as  he  knew,  he  produced  some  lyrics  that  show 
a  mastery  of  form  and  music  most  surprising  in  one  who 
practiced  so  little,  together  with  a  sincerity  of  feeling  that 
puts  any  mere  technical  mastery  quite  into  the  background. 
There  is  no  better  example  of  this  than  a  poem  written  late 
in  life  (as  characteristic,  by  the  way,  of  Bryant  as  Crossing 
the  Bar  is  of  Tennyson  or  Prospice  of  Browning) — Waiting 
by  the  Gate,  in  which  the  evening  bird,  the  streaming  sunshine, 
the  quiet  wood  and  lea,  and  the  turning  hinges  of  the  gate, 
conspire  to  make  a  song  and  a  picture  of  unfading  charm. 
Other  examples  almost  equally  good,  and  most  of  them  more 


BRYANT  107 

widely  known,  are  June,  The  Planting  of  the  Apple  Tree, 
Robert  of  Lincoln,  The  Snow-Shower,  The  Death  of  the  Flowers. 
However,  Bryant's  peculiar  excellence  lies  in  that  depart 
ment  of  lyric  poetry  which  is  farthest  removed  from  all  that 
the  word  lyric  strictly  implies — namely,  in  descriptive  and 
meditative  verse.  He  loves  to  stand  upon  Monument 
Mountain  and  brood  over  the  slow  changes  of  the  centuries, 
or  to  walk  by  Green  River,  trying  to  put  behind  him  the  cares 
of  existence,  and  envying  the  stream 

"as  it  glides  along 
Through  its  beautiful  banks  in  a  trance  of  song." 

Some  of  his  descriptions  are  as  sharp  as  etchings.  Take 
almost  any  part  of  the  Summer  Wind,  of  the  Winter  Piece,  of 
the  Inscription  for  the  Entrance  to  a  Wood; — 

"The  thick  roof 

Of  green  and  stirring  branches  is  alive 
And  musical  with  birds,  that  sing  and  sport 
In  wantonness  of  spirit;  while  below 
The  squirrel,  with  raised  paws  and  form  erect, 
Chirps  merrily.     Throngs  of  insects  in  the  shade 
Try  their  thin  wings  and  dance  in  the  warm  beam 
That  waked  them  into  life." 

The  Waterfowl,  too,  is  a  poem  that  engraves  itself  on  the 
memory;  to  read  it  is  to  add  a  permanent  picture  to  the  mind, 
so  that  ever  afterward  the  slightest  suggestion  is  sufficient  to 
call  up  the  vision  of  that  dark-limned  fowl  pursuing  its  way 
along  the  pathless  coast.  These  vivid  effects  are  produced, 
of  course,  by  a  vivid  imagination,  an  imagination  that  always 
derives  from  intensely  seized  fact.  That  the  strong  line  in 
Thanatopsis, 

"Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste," 

was  inserted  only  after  Bryant  had  seen  the  ocean,  is  proof 
that  his  inspiration  was  of  the  most  genuine  kind. 


108  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

Enough  has  been  quoted  already  to  show  that  Bryant  was 
pre-eminently  a  poet  of  nature.  Two-thirds  of  his  poems 
have  some  aspect  of  nature  for  their  theme.  He  belongs  to 
that  school  of  which  Wordsworth,  among  modern  English 
writers,  stands  at  the  head.  He  has  often  been  compared 
with  Wordsworth.  It  was  inevitable,  perhaps,  that  in  the 
case  of  our  early  writers  these  comparisons  should  be  made, 
as  of  Irving  with  Goldsmith,  of  Cooper  with  Scott.  No  harm 
can  come  of  them,  so  long  as  we  feel  and  frankly  admit  that 
our  own  writers  are  secondary,  and  even  in  some  measure 
derivative,  while  still  maintaining  that  they  were  never 
weakly  imitative.  Bryant  was  as  sincere  a  lover  of  Nature 
as  Wordsworth,  and  had,  if  not  quite  the  same  high  endow 
ment,  the  same  divine  right,  to  sing  her  beauties  and  her 
consolations.  What  the  primrose  and  the  daffodil  were  to 
Wordsworth,  the  yellow  violet  and  the  fringed  gentian  were 
to  Bryant,  and  if  ever  he  seemed  to  follow  Wordsworth  it  was 
in  a  spirit  of  sympathy,  not  of  emulation.  New  England 
has  her  own  flowers  and  birds,  and  we  can  only  rejoice  that 
they  found  their  poet. 

Yet  Bryant  was  much  more  than  the  poet  of  the  Hamp 
shire  and  Berkshire  hills;  nor  was  his  vision  limited  to  the 
birds  and  flowers.  His  imagination,  large  and  seer-like, 
swept  beyond  the  landscape  spread  before  his  eye,  exploring 
the  vast  reaches  of  a  continent,  from  "Hudson's  western 
marge"  to  the 

"palms  of  Mexico  and  vines 

Of  Texas and  the  limpid  brooks 

That  from  the  fountains  of  Sonora  glide 
Into  the  calm  Pacific." 

Read  A  Forest  Hymn,  The  Hurricane,  A  Rain-Dream,  The 
Prairies,  The  Night  Journey  of  a  River,  and  mark  how  the  poet 
is  resistlessly  drawn  to  the  larger  music  and  beauty  of  nature 
— the  anthems  of  the  forest  trees  and  the  panorama  of  the 


BRYANT  109 

storm;  how  he  traces  the  currents  of  life  through  sap  and  sun 
beam  and  river;  how  he  penetrates  into  the  graves  of  the 
Mound-builders  and  conjures  up  pictures  of  long-gone  ages, 
when 

"lovers  walked,  and  wooed 
In  a  forgotten  language,  and  old  tunes 
From  instruments  of  unremembered  form 
Gave  the  soft  winds  a  voice." 

It  is  this  high  imaginative  gift  which  Bryant  possessed,  in 
common  with  Cooper  of  our  prose  writers,  and  with  Emerson 
and  Whitman  of  our  poets,  yet  touched  in  him  with  a  fervor 
and  a  reverence  all  his  own,  that  makes  him  peculiarly  a 
poet  of  the  new  world  and  of  an  elder,  almost  primitive, 
time — in  a  word,  bardic. 

Yet  Bryant  had  limitations  fully  as  marked  as  his  abilities. 
He  had  quite  as  little  humor  in  his  composition  as  certain 
other  poets  of  "high  seriousness" — Dante,  for  instance,  or 
Walt  Whitman.  He  "had  a  talent  for  solitude  and  silence." 
Though  by  no  means  a  man  of  gloomy  disposition,  he  was 
overgiven  to  melancholy  musings;  in  spite  of  his  beautiful 
lyric  of  June,  he  was  the  poet  of  October  and  November, 

"Of  wailing  winds  and  naked  woods  and  meadows  brown  and  sere." 

And  he  was,  in  his  poetry  at  least,  almost  passionless;  he  gives1 
but  few  evidences  in  it  of  strong  human  interests  or  sympa 
thies,  and  altogether  too  few  words  of  hearty,  hopeful  cheer. 
His  very  love  of  nature  was  in  part  a  distaste  for  society — he 
sought  and  found  in  woods  and  fields  a  refuge  from  the  tur 
moil  of  life  and  the  sordidness  of  the  world.  If  we  did  not 
know  so  well  his  character  and  deeds,  we  should  have  imag 
ined  him  like  the  river  he  has  described  on  its  night  journey, 
stealing  away  from  the  pollution  of  human  abodes  to  the 
stainless  sea,  or  like  his  Wind  of  Night, 


HO  THE    NEW   ENVIRONMENT 

"A  lonely  wanderer  between  earth  and  cloud, 
In  the  black  shadow  and  the  chilly  mist, 
Along  the  streaming  mountainside,  and  through 
The  dripping  woods,  and  o'er  the  plashy  fields, 
Roaming  and  sorrowing  still,  like  one  who  makes 
The  journey  of  life  alone,  and  nowhere  meets 
A  welcome  or  a  friend,  and  still  goes  on 
In  darkness." 

Thanatopsis  remains,  first  and  last,  his  great  achievement 
— in  form  a  perfect  example  of  English  blank  verse,  of  which 
he  alone  among  American  writers  has  attained  to  any  real 
mastery;  in  substance  an  epitome  of  his  powers,  with  its  lofty 
imagination  and  its  musings  upon  the  themes  of  nature  and 
death.  It  barely  escapes,  too,  his  besetting  melancholy, 
though,  on  the  whole,  it  is  more  consoling  than  depressing, 
with  the  benign  presence  of  Nature  felt  through  it  all,  and 
sweet, 

"Strange  intimations  of  invisible  things 
Which,  while  they  seem  to  sadden,  give  delight, 
And  hurt  not,  but  persuade  the  soul  to  prayer."* 

It  has  been  called  a  pagan  poem,  with  no  ray  of  Christian 
hope  or  promise  of  immortality.  The  mere  absence  of  these 
things  does  not  make  it  pagan;  yet  if  any  one  is  left  unsatisfied 
with  the  spirit  of  reverence  that  breathes  through  its  lines, 
he  may  find  a  complement  in  The  Flood  of  Years,  that  majes 
tic  chant  written  in  the  poet's  eighty-second  year.  Together 
the  two  poems  make  a  perfect  confession  of  faith,  and  mark 
both  verges  of  a  life  and  genius  that  for  purity  and  conse 
cration  it  would  be  hard  to  find  excelled.  

*  R.  H.  Stoddard:     The  Dead  Master. 


CHAPTER  V 
ROMANCE.— POE,  HAWTHORNE 

The  dearth  of  American  literature  for  nearly  two  hundred 
years  was  essentially  a  dearth  of  romance.  The  cause  may 
be  traced  in  part  to  Puritanism.  The  Puritan  temperament 
was  not  one  to  indulge  visions  save  such  as  were  born  of 
religion  or  superstition,  and  the  New  England  writers  rarely 
turned  to  fictitious  themes.  The  early  New  England 
chroniclers,  for  instance,  were  content  to  remain  chroniclers; 
they  showed  no  such  tendency  as  did  John  Smith  to  infuse 
imagination  into  their  narratives.  In  the  non-Puritan 
South,  indeed,  had  the  South  been  studious  of  the  literary 
art,  romance  might  have  appeared  early.  As  it  was,  we  have 
seen  that  the  beginnings  were  made  at  Philadelphia  by 
Charles  Brockden  Brown,  though  not  until  about  1800. 
Shortly  after  that,  the  romantic  spirit,  in  a  poetic  guise, 
could  be  detected  in  the  ephemeral  work  of  such  New  York 
writers  as  Drake  and  the  elder  Dana,  or  in  the  poems  of 
Mrs.  Brooks,  written  largely  in  Cuba.  With  Irving  and 
Cooper,  both  also  of  New  York,  the  creative  imagination 
was  finally  unfettered  and  American  literature  came  into 
being.  Little  then  remained  but  to  refine  upon  the  work  of 
these  two  prolific  writers, — to  combine  the  art  of  the  one  with 
the  inventive  faculty  of  the  other,  and  to  make  those  further 
excursions  into  the  regions  of  the  supernatural  or  the  spiritual 
that  afford  the  final  test  of  the  romancer's  power.  This  is 
virtually  what  is  done  by  two  writers  of  the  second  third  of 
the  century,  Poe  and  Hawthorne — the  greatest  representa 
tives  of  our  literature  on  its  purely  creative  side.  And  of 
these  it  may  be  noted  that  the  one  to  come  earliest  to  fame 

111 


112  ROMANCE 

belonged,  by  everything  but  the  accident  of  birth,  to  the 
South. 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE,   1809-1849 

It  is  a  striking  commentary  upon  the  transitory  and  un 
reliable  nature  of  human  records  that  a  man  should  be  able  to 
live,  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe  did,  for  many  years  in  the  public  eye, 
and  in  an  age  when  everything  seems  to  go  on  record,  and  yet 
leave  the  simplest  facts  of  his  biography  surrounded  with 
mystery.  Poe's  ancestry,  the  place  and  date  of  his  birth,  his 
character  and  manner  of  life,  and  the  cause  and  manner  of 
his  death,  have  all  been  subjects  of  doubt  and  sometimes  of 
violent  dispute.  This  is  due  in  some  measure  to  the  irregu 
larity  of  his  life,  which  made  mystification  on  his  part  possible 
or  even  desirable,  and  in  some  measure  to  the  prejudices  of 
his  critics.  The  main  facts  and  dates  seem  to  be  now  settled, 
but  in  the  more  delicate  matter  of  character  and  habits  we 
must  still  speak  in  qualified  terms. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  born,  the  second  of  three  children, 
at  Boston,  January  19,  1809.  His  father  was  a  Baltimorean, 
the  son  of  a  Revolutionary  patriot,  possibly  of 
Irish  descent.  His  mother  was  of  English  birth. 
Both  were  members  of  a  theatrical  company  then  playing  at 
Boston.  Nearly  three  years  later,  by  the  death  of  the  mother 
at  Richmond,  Virginia,  the  children  were  left  orphans.  Edgar 
was  adopted  by  Mr.  John  Allan,  a  Scotchman  who  had  made 
a  fortune  in  Virginia  in  the  tobacco  trade.  He  was  brought 
up  in  luxury,  a  much  spoiled  child — petted  for  his  beauty 
and  precocity,  amusing  himself  with  dogs  and  ponies  at 
summer  resorts,  and  declaiming  on  the  table  for  Mr.  Allan's 
guests  while  they  drank  their  wine.  In  his  seventh  year  he 
was  taken  to  England  and  put  into  school  in  a  London 
suburb,  an  experience  which  afterward  furnished  a  setting 
for  the  story  of  William  Wilson.  Five  years  later  he  returned 
with  his  adoptive  parents  to  Richmond.  At  the  age  of 


POE  113 

seventeen,  a  proud,  reserved,  half-melancholy  and  wholly 
self-willed  youth,  he  entered  the  University  of  Virginia. 
There  he  studied  the  ancient  and  modern  languages  and  prac 
ticed  athletics  and  the  several  "gentlemanly"  forms  of  dissi 
pation.  He  was  withdrawn  by  Mr.  Allan  for  incurring 
gambling  debts.  From  the  tedious  routine  of  Mr.  Allan's 
counting-room  he  ran  away  to  Boston,  published  there  an 
anonymous  little  volume  of  forty  pages — the  Byronic  Tam 
erlane  and  Other  Poems  (1827)— and  enlisted  in  the  army 
under  an  assumed  name.*  Poe  afterward  allowed  the  story 
to  be  circulated  that  during  this  period  he  had  gone  abroad 
to  assist  the  Greeks  in  their  struggle  for  liberty,  like  Byron, 
and  that  he  had  spent  part  of  the  time  in  St.  Petersburg. 
Mr.  Allan,  discovering  his  whereabouts,  secured  his  discharge 
from  the  army,  and  obtained  his  appointment,  as  a  cadet,  to 
West  Point.  A  few  months  of  the  severe  discipline  of  that 
school,  however,  sufficed  for  Poe's  restless  nature,  and  it  is 
probable  that  he  deliberately  brought  upon  himself  the  dis 
missal  which  followed.  He  found  himself  adrift,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two,  with  nothing  further  to  expect  from  Mr.  Allan. 
Literature  presented  itself  as  his  most  natural  vocation. 
Poe  had,  indeed,  begun  to  take  himself  very  seriously  as  a 
poet  before  he  was  twenty,  and  he  had  published  a 

Manhood.  _.    .    .  ,  M  ...          P        i  . 

second  volume  at  Baltimore  while  waiting  lor  his 
cadetship.  This  volume  contained,  in  addition  to  a  revision 
of  the  ambitious  Tamerlane  and  some  minor  poems,  the 
mystical  and  scarcely  intelligible  Al  Aaraaf.  A  second 
edition,  issued  at  New  York  shortly  after  his  expulsion  from 
West  Point,  contained  several  new  poems  of  real  promise, 
like  Israfel  and  To  Helen.  But  poverty  and  the  maturing  of 
his  powers  conspired  to  turn  his  attention  to  prose,  and  his 
first  success  of  note  was  made  through  that  medium.  In 
1833  a  Baltimore  weekly,  The  Saturday  Visiter,  offered  a  prize 

*  Woodberry's  Poe,  American  Men  of  Letters  Series. 


114  ROMANCE 

of  one  hundred  dollars  for  the  best  prose  tale  submitted. 
Poe,  then  in  desperate  straits,  submitted  half  a  dozen. 
A  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle  was  awarded  the  first  prize.  John 
P.  Kennedy,  the  novelist,  who  was  one  of  the  judges,  took  a 
kindly  interest  in  the  author,  securing  him  some  work  in 
journalism,  and  probably  providing  even  food  and  clothing. 
Poe  was  then  living  at  Baltimore  with  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Clemm, 
and  her  daughter  Virginia.  Two  years  later  he  went  to 
Richmond  to  assist  in  editing  the  Southern  Literary  Messen 
ger,  and  about  the  same  time  married  Virginia  Clemm.  She 
was  a  mere  child,  scarcely  fourteen,  but  Poe,  whose  reverence 
for  women  was  his  noblest  trait,  loved  and  cared  for  her 
devotedly  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  poverty  and  ill 
health  that  ensued,  until  her  death  eleven  years  later,  a  short 
time  before  his  own.  The  inspiration  of  some  of  his  finest 
creations — the  child  lovers  of  Eleonora,  for  instance — is 
to  be  found  in  this  tender  and  ill-fated  attachment. 

It  is  a  melancholy  history  to  follow,  a  history  of  fierce 
struggle  and  final  defeat.  That  Poe  should  be  blamed  for 
waging  war  upon  society  as  he  sometimes  did,  is  not  clear;  on 
the  principle  of  retaliation  there  was  much  to  justify  him. 
Yet  we  must  feel  that  if  he  had  only  spent  the  little  moral 
strength  that  w^as  given  him  in  waging  war  upon  his  own 
weaknesses,  the  end  might  have  been  happier.  When  fame 
did  come  to  him,  it  was  accompanied  with  envy  and  detrac 
tion,  and  he  never  had  any  measure  of  real  prosperity.  His 
wilful  and  erratic  temperament  further  perverted  by  his 
more  or  less  frequent  yielding  to  the  temptations  of  liquor 
and  opium,  made  any  continued  effort  impossible.  One 
career  after  another  was  opened  to  him  only  to  be  closed 
again;  one  enterprise  after  another  was  undertaken  only  to 
fail  or  be  abandoned.  The  eighteen  months  at  Richmond 
were  followed  by  seven  years  at  Philadelphia,  where  he  edited 
successfully  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  and  Graham's  Maga- 


FOE  115 

zine.  In  the  editorship  of  the  latter  he  was  succeeded  by 
Rufus  W.  Griswold,  who  became,  after  Poe's  death,  his  hos 
tile  biographer.  This  was  the  period  of  his  greatest  pro 
ductiveness.  In  1838  was  published  The  Narrative  of  Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,  a  fantastic  and  horrible,  but  professedly  realis 
tic  sea- tale.  In  1839  appeared  Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and 
Arabesque.  Through  this  period,  too,  must  have  been 
written  many  of  the  poems  that  were  published  in  the  volume 
of  1845,  The  Raven  and  Other  Poems.  In  1844  he  went  to 
New  York,  and  finally  took  up  his  residence  at  a  cottage  at 
Fordham,  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city.  There,  in  January, 
1847,  his  wife  died,  and  he  followed  her  body  to  the  grave 
wrapped  in  the  military  cloak  that  had  been  her  last  coverlet 
against  the  winter's  cold.  A  severe  illness  succeeded,  from 
which  he  recovered  physically,  but  the  Poe  of  the  remaining 
two  years  was  scarcely  the  same  man, — the  wreck  of  a  wreck, 
though  able  yet  to  compose  such  monodies  of  madness  as 
Eureka  and  The  Bells  and  Ulalume.  The  end  came  tragi 
cally.  He  was  returning  to  New  York  from  a  visit  to  Rich 
mond  in  the  autumn  of  1849,  when  chance  brought  him  and 
election  day  together  in  the  city  of  Baltimore.  He  was 
found  in  an  election  booth  intoxicated,  or  drugged,  or  both, 
and  was  taken  to  a  hospital  where  he  died  in  a  delirium 
several  days  later. 

Immediately  men's  fancies  began  to  play  with  the  mem 
ory  of  the  erratic  genius,  and  a  process  of  myth-making  began 

which  has  gone  on  for  half  a  century,  transforming 
Character.  P°e  mto  a  kind  of  superhuman  creature,  angelic  or 

diabolic  according  to  the  prejudices  of  the  myth- 
maker.  The  mere  seeker  for  facts  is  everywhere  met  by  such 
maundering  as  that  of  Griswold,  who,  shortly  after  Poe's 
death,  described  him  as  one  who  "would  walk  the  streets, 
in  madness  or  melancholy,  with  lips  moving  in  indistinct 
curses,  or  with  eyes  upturned  in  passionate  prayer,"  or  who, 


116  ROMANCE 

"with  his  glances  introverted  to  a  heart  gnawed  with  anguish 
and  with  a  face  shrouded  in  gloom,  would  brave  the  wildest 
storms,  and  all  night,  with  drenched  garments  and  arms 
beating  the  winds  and  rains,  would  speak  as  if  to  spirits  that 
at  such  times  only  could  be  evoked  by  him  from  the  Aidenn." 
It  is  almost  impossible  now  to  get  behind  this  veil  of  tradition 
and  see  the  man  Poe  face  to  face  as  his  fellows  saw  him,  a 
desperate  struggler  for  his  daily  bread.  Even  with  the  clear 
est  light,  so  complex  a  character  as  his  would  be  hard  to 
analyze  and  still  harder  to  judge.  We  must  admit  that,  with 
all  his  genius,  he  was  morally  delinquent  on  many  counts. 
He  lacked  a  fine  sense  of  honor.  He  had  no  adequate  con 
ception  of  a  man's  duties  either  to  himself  or  to  his  fellows, 
and  though  many  stood  ready  to  befriend  him,  he  lived  in 
spiritual  solitude,  the  friend  of  no  man.  He  did  not  exactly 
lack  will,  as  has  been  so  often  said,  for  he  acted  vigorously 
through  his  short  life;  but  he  seemed  not  to  recognize  any 
specific  moral  ends  toward  which  a  man  should  bend  his 
activity.  He  was  full  of  contradictions.  Though  possessed 
of  a  keen,  cool,  logical  mind, 'he  was  always  toying  with  specu 
lations  that  sober  science  repudiates.  His  exalted  dreams 
of  purity  and  goodness  were  in  strong  contrast  to  the  per 
versity  of  his  deeds.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  knew  the 
meaning  of  the  word  morality,  and  the  judge  of  his  character 
must  feel  that  if  there  be  such  a  thing  as  a  man  who  can  do 
evil  deeds  without  being  himself  evil,  Poe  was  that  man. 
At  any  rate,  between  his  admirers  and  his  detractors  one  may 
most  safely  take  the  middle  ground  that  his  was  not  a  case 
for  either  praise  or  blame,  but  only  pity.  Heredity  and 
training  were  against  him,  the  very  conditions  of  American 
life  were  adverse,1  and  the  tragedy  of  his  career  is  best  remem 
bered  in  sorrow.  After  all,  his  works  are  our  permanent 
possession,  and  the  highest  of  them  were  touched  only  with 
the  misery  and  pathos  of  his  life,  never  with  its  dishonor. 


POE  117 

Poe's  work  as  a  journalist  and  critic  does  not  call  for  much 
comment.     In  the  circle  of  his  authority  he  came  to  be  well 
known  and  feared;  and  the  independence  of  his 
views  and  his  frankness  in  expressing  them  did  a 
real  service  to  the  profession  of  literary  criticism 
in  America,  which  had  degenerated  to  mere  idle  compliment 
and  mutual  admiration.     But  his  critical  method  was  not 
the  method  of  calm  inquiry  which  sets  up  standards  and 
judges  fearlessly  and  honestly  by  them.     He  was  fearless 
enough,  but  unfair.     He  had  critical  acumen  and  exquisite 
literary  sensibilities,  and  so  long  as  he  depended  on  these  he 
did  well.     He  knew  the  marks  of  genius;  a  Tennyson  or  a 
Hawthorne,  even  though  unknown  to  fame,  was  immediately 
known  to   Poe.     But  his   foolish   prejudices   and   personal 
jealousies  often  rendered  his  judgments  worthless.     A  man 
who  could  write  an  article  on  Longfellow  and  Other  Plagiar 
ists  was  not  likely  to  carry  with  him  either  sympathy  or 
conviction.     He  was  too  extravagant  and  too  fond  of  the 
sensational.     The    charge    of    literary    theft    in    particular 
he  liked  to  make,  though  he  rarely  proved  anything  more 
than  a  measure  of  indebtedness  which  the  authors  them 
selves  would  have  been  ready  to  acknowledge.     Efforts  have 
since  been  made  to  show  that  he  was  himself  not  innocent  of 
plagiarism.     But  these  efforts  have  succeeded  scarcely  better 
than  his  own.    That  he  should  have  gone  to  Macaulay's  War 
ren  Hastings  instead  of  to  an  encyclopedia  for  a  description 
of  the  holy  city  of  Benares,  which  he  needed  in  his  Tale  of  the 
Ragged  Mountains,  counts  for  little.     And  as  for  the  many 
striking  parallels  between  his  poems  and  those  of  a  certain  Dr. 
Chivers,  of  Georgia,*  the  only  conclusion  an  impartial  student 
can  reach  is  that  Chivers  owed  far  more  to  Poe  than  Poe  ever 
owed  to  Chivers.     Probably  Poe  has  been  the  least  "in 
fluenced"  of  all  melodious  poets  since  Spenser. 

*Joel  Bentcm:  In  the  Poe  Circle. 


118  ROMANCE 

Poe's  best  criticisms  of  a  general  nature  are  his  essays  on 
The  Poetic  Principle  and  The  Philosophy  of  Composition, 
though  both  must  be  read  guardedly.  One  of  the  theories 
laid  down  in  the  first,  that  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a 
long  poem,  may  be  supported  only  by  assuming  that  there  is 
no  poetry  but  lyrical  or  emotional  poetry.  The  second  essay 
is  occupied  with  an  explanation  of  the  mechanical  way  in 
which  The  Raven  was  constructed — a  very  entertaining 
explanation,  but  one  that  no  one  who  knows  Poe  or  who 
knows  poetry  will  accept  as  final.  His  so-called  scientific 
or  philosophical  works,  Eureka  and  the  rest,  are  worthless. 
He  loved  to  make  a  great  show  of  learning  by  all  sorts  of 
obscure  references,  but  he  had  little  real  scholarship,  and 
though  he  was  a  subtle  analyst  he  was  not  a  profound  reas- 
oner.  His  greatness  lay  in  his  imaginative  work — his  tales 
and  his  poems. 

The  tales  may  be  said  to  constitute  a  distinct  addition  to 
the  world's  literature.  From  time  immemorial  there  have 
been  tales  in  prose  and  in  verse,  tales  legendary, 
romantic,  and  humorous,  but  never  any  quite  like 
Poe's.  How  difficult  it  is  to  find  any  derivation  for  them 
may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  the  writers  most  commonly 
mentioned  as  having  given  some  direction  to  Poe's  genius  are 
Defoe  and  Bulwer !  Godwin  and  the  German  Hoffmann  would 
be  nearer  the  mark,  yet  very  distant  still.  "Bizarre"  and 
"terrific"  are  the  words  which  Kennedy  in  his  helplessness 
applied  to  the  tales ;  and  the  words  represent  fairly  the  first 
impression  which  they  will  always  make,  for  the  two  qualities 
of  strangeness  and  power  are  to  be  found  in  nearly  all.  A 
few  are  grotesque  only,  but  they  are  among  the  weakest  and 
are  seldom  read.  Perhaps  we  may  venture  to  divide  the 
important  ones,  according  to  their  dominant  motives,  into 
analytical  tales,  allegorical  or  moral  tales,  and  tales  of  the 
supernatural. 


POE  119 

The  analytical  tales  are  tales  embracing  situations  that 
call  for  the  acutest  exercise  of  the  human  reason — the  unrav 
eling  of  a  mystery,  the  detection  of  some  obscure  law  of 
nature,  or  the  achievement  of  some  difficult  feat  by  the 
resources  of  science.  The  Gotd-Biig  is  one  of  the  best  of  this 
type.  It  has  in  it  a  strong  element  of  adventure,  but  that 
Poe's  chief  interest  did  not  lie  in  this  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  the  climax  of  the  story  is  not  the  finding  of  Captain 
Kidd's  treasure,  but  the  deciphering  of  the  cryptogram 
through  which  the  treasure  was  found.  Other  writers  of 
such  stories,  Jules  Verne,  for  instance,  in  his  Journey  to  the 
Center  of  the  Earth,  invert  this  order.  The  Murders  in  the 
Rue  Morgue,  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,  and  The  Purloined 
Letter  are  all  what  we  should  call  "detective  stories,"  and  are 
the  forerunners  of  many  stories  of  their  kind  from  sensational 
novels  up  to  novels  of  elaborate  mystery  and  skill,  like 
Wilkie  Collins 's  Moonstone.  To  be  convinced  of  Poe's 
influence  in  this  field  one  needs  only  to  read  his  Purloined 
Letter  and  then  A  Scandal  in  Bohemia  in  Dr.  Conan  Doyle's 
Adventures  of  Sherlock  Holmes.  Several  of  the  analytical 
tales  have  subsidiary  elements  of  interest,  notably  horror 
in  the  baboon  murderer  of  the  Rue  Morgue,  an  element 
which  Mr.  Kipling,  with  questionable  art,  has  ventured  to 
make  the  sole  theme  of  his  gruesome  Bimi.  Among  the  tales 
of  adventure  with  a  background  of  semi-scientific  specu 
lation  are  Hans  Pfaall  (the  story  of  a  trip  to  the  moon), 
A  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,  and  A  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom. 
In  the  two  latter,  however,  the  interest  of  mere  ingenuity  is 
overshadowed  by  the  interest  of  the  narratives  themselves, 
enriched,  as  they  are,  with  all  the  resources  of  Poe's  imagi 
nation.  It  may  well  be  that  the  wild  fancy  of  a  descent  into 
the  maelstrom  grew  primarily  out  of  a  mathematical  theorem 
concerning  the  action  of  cylinders  in  a  vortex,  but  the 
qualities  that  give  that  tale  its  distinction  and  its  power, 


120  ROMANCE 

setting  it  indeed  in  a  place  apart,  are  higher  than  this.  It  is 
in  such  passages  as  the  following,  where  subtlety  of  analysis 
gives  way  before  the  splendor  and  majesty  of  the*  pictured 
scene,  that  we  find  the  real  genius  of  Poe: 

"'We  are  now,'  he  continued  in  that  particularizing  manner  which 
distinguished  him — 'we  are  now  close  upon  the  Norwegian  coast —  in  the 
sixty-eighth  degree  of  latitude — in  the  great  province  of  Nordland — 
and  in  the  dreary  district  of  Lofoden.  The  mountain  upon  whose  top 
we  sit  is  Helseggen,  the  Cloudy.  Now  raise  yourself  up  a  little  higher — 
hold  on  to  the  grass  if  you  feel  giddy — so — and  look  out,  beyond  the 
belt  of  vapor  beneath  us,  into  the  sea.' 

"I  looked  dizzily,  and  beheld  a  wide  expanse  of  ocean,  whose 
waters  wore  so  inky  a  hue  as  to  bring  at  once  to  my  mind  the  Nubian 
geographer's  account  of  the  Mare  Tenebrarum.  A  panorama  more 
deplorably  desolate  no  human  imagination  can  conceive.  To  the 
right  and  left,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  there  lay  outstretched, 
like  ramparts  of  the  world,  lines  of  horribly  black  and  beetling  cliff, 
whose  character  of  gloom  was  but  the  more  forcibly  illustrated  by  the 
surf  which  reared  high  up  against  it  its  white  and  ghastly  crest,  howling 
and  shrieking  forever. 

"As  the  old  man  spoke,  I  became  aware  of  a  loud  and  gradually 
increasing  sound,  like  the  moaning  of  a  vast  herd  of  buffaloes  upon 
an  American  prairie;  and  at  the  same  moment  I  perceived  that  what 
seamen  term  the  chopping  character  of  the  ocean  beneath  us,  was  rap 
idly  changing  into  a  current  which  set  to  the  eastward.  Even  while 
I  gazed  this  current  acquired  a  monstrous  velocity.  Each  moment 
added  to  its  speed — to  its  headlong  impetuosity.  In  five  minutes  the 
whole  sea  as  far  as  Vurrgh  was  lashed  into  ungovernable  fury;  but  it 
was  between  Moskoe  and  the  coast  that  the  main  uproar  held  its 
sway.  Here  the  vast  bed  of  the  waters,  seamed  and  scarred  into  a 
thousand  conflicting  channels,  burst  suddenly  into  frenzied  convul 
sion — heaving,  boiling,  hissing, — gyrating  in  gigantic  and  innumer 
able  vortices,  and  all  whirling  and  plunging  on  to  the  eastward  with 
rapidity  which  water  never  elsewhere  assumes  except  in  precipitous 
descents. 

"In  a  few  minutes  more  there  came  over  the  scene  another  radical 
alteration.  The  general  surface  grew  somewhat  more  smooth,  and  the 
whirlpools  one  by  one  disappeared,  while  prodigious  streaks  of  foam 
became  apparent  where  none  had  been  seen  before.  These  streaks, 


POE  121 

at  length,  spreading  out  to  a  great  distance,  and  entering  into  com 
bination,  took  unto  themselves  the  gyratory  motion  of  the  subsided 
vortices,  and  seemed  to  form  the  germ  of  another  more  vast.  Sud 
denly — very  suddenly — this  assumed  a  distinct  and  definite  existence 
in  a  circle  of  more  than  a  mile  in  diameter.  The  edge  of  the  whirl 
was  represented  by  a  broad  belt  of  gleaming  spray;  but  no  particle 
of  this  slipped  into  the  mouth  of  the  terrific  funnel,  whose  interior, 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  fathom  it,  was  a  smooth,  shining,  and  jet-black 
wall  of  water,  inclined  to  the  horizon  at  an  angle  of  some  forty-five 
degrees,  speeding  dizzily  round  and  round  with  a  swaying  and  sweltering 
motion,  and  sending  forth  to  the  winds  an  appalling  voice,  half-shriek, 
half-roar,  such  as  not  even  the  mighty  cataract  of  Niagara  ever  lifts 
up  in  its  agony  to  Heaven.  The  mountain  trembled  to  its  very  base, 
and  the  rock  rocked." 


The  allegorical  tales,  comparatively  few  in  number,  are 
weakened  in  point  of  art  by  their  moral  intent.  William 
Wilson  is  an  allegory  of  the  two-fold  nature  of  man — of  the 
conflict  between  the  upward  tendency  to  good  and  the 
downward  tendency  to  evil.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  is  another  story  with  the  same 
theme.  But  William  Wilson,  though  written  in  a  flowing 
style  and  with  patient,  deliberate  art,  is  not  a  great  tale.  The 
moral  is  crystallized,  not  held  in  solution.  What  should 
be  the  undermeaning  is  on  the  surface:  the  tale  yields  to  the 
homily.  We  note,  too,  an  incongruous  mixture  of  things 
real  and  things  unreal.  The  details  of  the  background  are 
faithfully  given  only  to  be  completely  lost  sight  of  again: 
they  are  not  organic.  Hence  the  story,  as  a  story,  fails. 
The  Black  Cat  is  much  better,  and  is,  indeed,  one  of  Poe's 
best  known  tales.  It  is  possible  to  read  it  and  scarcely 
perceive  the  underlying  motive  of  the  accusing  conscience. 
Its  only  weak  point  is  one  common  to  all  the  tales — a  lack 
of  characterization.  Poe's  characters  are  never  real  human 
beings,  and  no  matter  what  atrocities  they  commit  or  what 
agonies  they  suffer,  we  feel  neither  disgust  nor  sympathy, 


122  ROMANCE 

we  are  moved  purely  by  the  abstract  horror  of  the  situation. 
Poe  lacked  the  tear-compelling  power  which  even  a  carica 
turist  like  Dickens  possessed.  But  for  naked  horror  The 
Black  Cat  is  hardly  to  be  surpassed.  It  certainly  produces 
an  effect,  and  that,  Poe  declared,  was  the  main  object  in  most 
of  his  tales.  The  Man  in  the  Crowd  and  The  T ell-Tale  Heart 
are  also  tales  of  conscience,  though  less  distinctly  allegorical. 
The  Masque  of  the  Red  Death  is  allegorical,  but  without  moral 
significance, — the  fear  it  symbolizes  is  purely  physical.  But 
this  is  another  of  Poe's  most  successful  fantasies,  at  once 
gorgeous  and  spectral,  ridiculously  impossible  yet  awfully 
real. 

In  these  several  forms  of  narrative — the  detective  story, 
the  tale  of  pseudo-science,  the  moral  allegory — Poe's  influ 
ence  has  been  both  wide  and  deep.  But  there  is  another 
domain  in  which  his  unique  genius  found  a  still  higher  expres 
sion  and  in  which  he  has  had  no  successful  imitators.  This  is 
the  domain  of  the  supernatural.  Here  belong  the  tales  of 
Berenice,  Morella,  Shadow,  Poe's  own  favorite  Ligeia,  and 
that  tale  which  critical  opinion  commonly  ranks  highest — 
The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher.  The  motive  of  the  two  last 
is  one  of  the  most  fantastic  and  terrible  in  the  field  of  ro 
mance.  It  is  the  idea,  which  seems  to  have  been  almost  a 
hallucination  with  Poe,  of  the  possible  life  of  the  spirit,  that  is, 
of  the  thinking,  sentient  part  of  man,  after  the  death  of  the 
body — not  immortality,  be  it  understood,  but  a  temporary 
prolonging  of  spirit  life  by  sheer  power  of  will.  Yet  the 
motive,  gruesome  as  it  is,  is  saved  by  the  cunning  of  the  artist 
from  being  repulsive  or  ridiculous;  for  Poe  builds  up,  with 
unerring  skill,  his  effects  of  transcendent  beauty  and  at  the 
same  time  transcendent  horror  and  awe.  It  would  be  almost 
as  difficult  to  say  how. the  effects  are  produced  as  it  would 
be  to  say  why  a  violin  fantasia  has  the  power  to  move  or 
fascinate,  but  the  perfection  of  the  art  that  produces  them  is 


POE  123 

no  more  to  be  questioned  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other. 
The  deficiencies  of  the  tales  we  must  grant,  though  we 
need  not  hold  the  deficiencies  to  be  defects.  They  contain 
nothing  refreshing,  nothing  morally  uplifting  or  sweetly 
humanizing.  The  sunshine  is  not  the  broad  sunshine  of  the 
fields, — it  comes  sifted  through  dense  foliage  or  colored  glass. 
The  winds  blow  from  caverns  and  vaulted  tombs.  The  color 
on  the  cheeks  is  hectic,  the  mirth  is  hysterical.  Everywhere 
are  grief  and  madness,  disease  and  death.  But  the  aesthetic 
passion,  which  supplied  in  Poe  the  place  of  the  ethic  passion, 
works  a  transfiguration,  making  beauty  even  out  of  ugliness 
and  ghastliness.  Two  or  three  impressions,  indeed,  must  be 
left  abidingly  upon  every  reader  of  Poe's  prose.  First,  there 
is  the  charm  of  the  language  itself,  sometimes  swift  •  and 
strong,  as  in  the  description  of  the  setting  sun  that,  "a  dim, 
silver-like  rim  alone,  rushed  down  the  unfathomable  ocean," 
sometimes  lyric  in  its  melody,  as  in  the  description  of  "Ven 
ice,  a  star-beloved  Elysium  of  the  sea,  the  wide  windows  of 
whose  Palladian  palaces  look  down  with  a  deep  and  bitter 
meaning  upon  the  secrets  of  her  silent  waters."  With  this 
goes  the  fascination  of  the  vivid  scenes,  ranging  from  terror 
to  beauty  and  sublimity.  What  a  picture  is  that  of  the 
spectral  crew: — "their  knees  trembled  with  infirmity;  their 
shoulders  were  bent  double  with  decrepitude ;  their  shrivelled 
skins  rattled  in  the  wind;  their  voices  were  low,  tremulous, 
and  broken;  their  eyes  glistened  with  the  rheum  of  years; 
and  their  gray  hairs  streamed  terribly  in  the  tempest."  Or 
who  that  has  once  seen  in  imagination  ever  forgets  the 
"Valley  of  the  Many-Colored  Grass,"  the  noble  hall  "in  a 
dim  city  called  Ptolemais,"  the  "black  and  lurid  tarn  that 
lay  in  unruffled  lustre"  by  the  melancholy  house  of  Usher? 
Lastly,  there  is  the  magic  touch,  the  necromancer's  wand, 
which  removes  all  these  scenes  into  the  uncharted  realm 
of  the  supernatural  and  invests  them  with  a  kind  of  sacred 


124  ROMANCE 

awe,  so  that  one  who  has  wandered  for  an  hour  in  the 
country  of  Poe  comes  back  to  this  every-day  world  like  a 
dreamer  and  an  alien. 

The  poetry  of  Poe's  mature  years  has  the  same  attributes, 
only  it  is,  as  poetry  should  be,  still  more  ethereal.  If  we  had 
His  not  come  to  demand  so  much  of  poetry,  there 

Poetry.  COuld  be  little  hesitation  in  ranking  Poe's  with  the 

very  greatest  in  any  language.  But  cultivated  readers  have 
fallen  into  the  habit  of  searching  beneath  emotions  for  moral 
and  intellectual  stimulus.  They  want,  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
phrase,  a  "criticism  of  life,"  and  failing  to  find  that,  they  are 
dissatisfied.  Now  that,  Poe  cannot  be  said  to  afford — life  as 
we  know  it  he  scarcely  touches  at  all.  But  youth,  that  is 
always  a  poet  and  that  knows  little  of  definitions,  reads  Poe 
and  says,  "This  is  pure  poetry."  And  the  test  should  satisfy 
us  about  Poe  and  make  us  doubt  our  definitions.  Beyond 
all  question,  whatever  Poe  lacked — and  he  lacked  many 
things — he  possessed  the  two  fundamental  attributes  of  a 
poet,  melody  and  imagination,  in  a  supreme  degree.  They 
are  attributes,  too,  that  speak  for  themselves,  requiring  no 
proof  or  argument.  When  The  Raven  was  published  in 
Willis's  Evening  Mirror  in  January  1845,  America  knew  for  a 
certainty  that  English  literature  had  another  poet  to  reckon 
with.  The  Raven  immediately  became,  and  remains,  one  of 
the  most  widely  known  of  English  poems;  it  can  be  mentioned 
anywhere  without  apology  or  explanation,  and  there  is 
scarcely  a  lover  of  melodious  verse  who  cannot  repeat  many 
of  its  lines  and  stanzas.  Strange  it  seems  that  Poe's  poetic 
genius  should  ever  require  vindication. 

It  is  true,  the  product  is  meagre.  The  Raven,  The  Bells, 
Ulalume,  Annabel  Lee,  The  Haunted  Palace,  The  Conqueror 
Worm,  Israfel,  To  Helen,  To  One  in  Paradise,  The  City  in  the 
Sea — one  can  almost  count  on  the  fingers  his  great  poems. 
But  that  is  true  of  many  notable  poets,  even  where  the 


POE  125 

product  is  large.  Poe's  trash  (certain  stanzas,  for  instance, 
in  For  Annie)  is  very  sorry  trash,  but  there  is  not  a  great  deal 
of  it,  and  there  is  practically  no  mediocre  verse.  What  is 
good  touches  the  high-water  mark  of  excellence. 

And  its  quality  is  unmistakable.  Its  appeal  is  to  the  sen 
timent  of  Beauty — the  one  appeal  which,  according  to  Poe's 
theory,  is  the  final  justification  of  any  poem.  Language  is 
made  to  yield  its  utmost  of  melody.  From  words,  even  from 
letters,  one  might  say — for  Poe  actually  fabricated  words 
whose  sounds  would  suit  his  purpose — effects  are  wrested  such 
as  had  never  been  wrested  before. 

"The  skies  they  were  ashen  and  sober; 

The  leaves  they  were  crisped  and  sere, — 

The  leaves  they  were  withering  and  sere, — 
It  was  night  in  the  lonesome  October 

Of  my  most  immemorial  year; 
It  was  hard  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber, 

In  the  misty  mid-region  of  Weir, — 
It  was  down  by  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 

In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir." 

This  is  haunting  music,  though  here  again,  as  in  the  tales,  if 
we  seek  to  know  precisely  how  the  effect  is  secured,  we  are 
baffled.  The  ordinary  devices  of  alliteration,  refrains,  and 
repetends,  are  freely  used,  but  no  mere  resort  to  those  devices 
can  parallel  the  effect.  The  truth  is,  the  verse  is  not  only 
haunting,  but  haunted.  In  it  is  the  strange,  unearthly 
imagery,  and  over  it  is  the  spectral  light,  that  only  Poe's 
imagination  could  create.  To  a  beauty  of  language,  by  its 
very  nature  as  indescribable  as  music,  is  added  a  weird 
enchantment  of  scene  that  vanishes  before  any  attempt  to 
reclothe  it  in  other  words.  Analysis  and  criticism  are  help 
less  before  this  final  achievement  of  Poe's  art — the  creation 
of  that  "supernal  loveliness"  which,  he  declared,  it  is  the 
struggle  of  all  fit  souls  to  apprehend. 


126  ROMANCE 

Beyond  this  we  may  scarcely  go.  There  are  dark  hints 
of  other  things  in  Poe's  poetry.  The  Raven  of  his  dreams  is, 
in  the  words  of  Mr.  Stedman,  "an  emblem  of  the  Irreparable, 
the  guardian  of  pitiless  memories."  The  Haunted  Palace  and 
the  Conqueror  Worm  have  a  direct  and  almost  frightful  alle 
gorical  significance.  And  what  music  may  not  come  from  the 
lute  of  Israfel,  what  hopes  are  not  barred  by  the  legended 
tomb  of  Ulalume?  But  we  gain  little  from  the  study  of  these 
things,  indeed  we  almost  resent  any  covert  significance.  For 
of  Poe's  poetry,  as  of  his  highest  prose,  it  must  be  said  that  it 
makes  almost  no  moral  appeal.  Nothing  is  conceived  on  a 
moral  plane.  He  has  nothing  to  teach  us — no  mission,  no 
message.  But  the  sounds  and  the  visions  remain,  the  poet's 
mastery  over  the  secrets  of  the  terrible,  the  mysterious,  the 
sublime,  and  the  beautiful;  and  we  may  well  rest  content  to 
listen  without  questions  to  the  wild  measures  of  Israfel's  lute, 
to  gaze  awe-stricken  upon  the  city  in  the  sea,  or  to  pass 
speechless  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber  and  through  the  ghoul- 
haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

By  all  that  has  been  said,  Poe's  romantic  temper  is  made 

plain.     It  does  not  betray  itself  in  any  dominant  love  for 

nature,  nor  in  any  tender  sentimentalizing,  but 

Position  in     rather  in  a  passion  for  the  antique,  the  highly 

Literature. 

adorned,  the  odd,  the  gloomy,  the  marvellous, — 
in  a  word,  for  that  "strangeness  in  beauty"  which  Mr.  Pater, 
borrowing  a  phrase  from  Bacon,  has  declared  to  be  the 
distinctive  romantic  note.  Poe  was  passionately  fond  of 
mystery,  and  he  was  drawn  irresistibly  to  the  supreme 
mysteries  of  life  and  death.  In  so  far  as  his  work  is  morbidly 
psychological,  it  allies  him  with  Charles  Brockden  Brown, 
and  through  him  with  the  metaphysical  school  of  Godwin, 
though  Poe's  imagination  was  of  a  higher  order.  If  we  must 
name  any  prototype,  it  would  be  Coleridge.  But  Poe  was 
Poe.  We  may  account  for  Longfellow,  for  Hawthorne,  for 


THE    MINOR   ROMANCERS  127 

Emerson;  but  the  individual  note,  the  "inexpressible  monad" 
which  evolutionary  science  itself  as  yet  fails  to  account  for, 
was  peculiarly  strong  in  Poe,  and  we  must  leave  him  unde- 
rived.  Abroad  he  has  long  been  considered  as  a  creative 
writer  of  the  first  rank.  It  is  to  the  shame  of  Americano 
that  they  have  seldom  been  able  to  take  quite  his  full  meas 
ure;  but  our  best  critics  have  been  instinctively  attracted 
to  him,  and  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  he  was  the  first  of  our 
nineteenth  century  men  of  letters  whose  works  were  honored 
with  a  scholarly  and  fairly  definitive  critical  edition. 

THE  MINOR  ROMANCERS 

Our  review  of  the  minor  fiction  that  was  produced  contem 
poraneously  with  the  earliest  and,  in  general,  the  best  work  of 
Cooper  closed  with  the  record  of  one  writer  of  the  region 
south  of  New  York — John  Pendleton  Kennedy,  of  Baltimore. 
Accompanying  and  following  Kennedy,  whose  activity  in 
fiction  was  not  long  continued,  were  several  writers  who 
availed  themselves,  like  him,  of  the  romantic  possibilities  of 
their  environment,  and  so  became,  in  their  modest  way, 
more  destinctively  romancers  of  the  South  than  Poe,  whose 
genius  was  really  of  no  land  or  clime.  One  of  these  was  a 
certain  Dr.  Bird,  of  Delaware  and  Philadelphia,  an 

Robert  Mont- 

lomery^Bird,  early  explorer  of  the  Mammoth  Cave,  and  an 
industrious  writer  of  tragedies  and  tales.  Two 
romances  of  Mexico — Calavar  (1834)  and  The  Infidel  (1835) 
— received  high  praise  from  Prescott;  and  the  once  famous 
Kentucky  romance,  Nick  of  the  Woods,  or  the  Jibbenainosay 
(1837),  had  the  merit  of  portraying  the  North  American 
savages  without  any  of  Cooper's  idealization. 

The  writer  of  the  South,  however,  who  was  most  genuinely 
moved  by  its  romantic  scenes  and  legends,  and  who  succeeded 
in  doing  for  colonial  and  border  life  there  a  service  similar  to 
that  Cooper  did  for  the  North,  was  William  Gilmore  Simms, 


128  ROMANCE 

of  Charleston,  South  Carolina.  Simms  began  his  career  as  a 
lawyer,  but  soon  adopted  the  profession  of  journalism  and 
William  Gil  literature.  To  the  end  he  remained  a  professional 
more  Simms,  author,  writing  both  poetry  and  prose  with  great 

1806-lo70.  .    .    . 

facility — romance,  drama,  history,  and  criticism. 
His  published  works  number  over  sixty  titles.  Perhaps  the 
best  of  his  romances  is  The  Yemassee,  published  in  1835,  a 
tale  of  the  war  in  1715  between  the  early  Carolina  settlers 
and  the  Indians.  Others  are  Guy  Rivers  (1834),  a  tale  of 
Georgia;  The  Partisan  (1835),  a  tale  of  Marion's  men;  Mel- 
lichampe  (1836),  another  tale  of  the  Revolution;  and  Beau- 
champe  (1842),  a  tale  of  Kentucky.  Hastily  written,  his 
stories  are  naturally  deficient  in  the  higher  qualities  of  con 
struction  and  style,  but  they  have  plenty  of  vigor  and  imagi 
native  color,  and  their  vogue  is  still  great  enough  to  warrant 
their  publication  in  fairly  complete  editions. 

To  New  York  belonged  several  writers  of  tales  of  adven 
ture,  whose  scenes  were  laid  on  shipboard  or  in  remote  quar- 
wiiiiam  star-  ters  of  the  earth.  One  of  these  was  Dr.  Mayo,  the 
mC2*$9a5yo'  author  of  Kaloolah  (1849),  an  extravagant  story 
Merimfie,  of  Yankee  exploration  in  the  wilds  of  Africa. 
1819-1891.  Another,  and  more  important,  was  Herman 
Melville,  who  in  his  youth  embarked  upon  a  whaling  vessel 
bound  for  the  Pacific  and  spent  several  years,  a  portion  of 
the  time  in  captivity,  among  the  South  Sea  Islands.  The 
series  of  partly  fanciful  tales  founded  upon  his  experiences— 
Typee  (1846),  Omoo  (1847),  Moby  Dick,  or  the  White  Whale 
(1851),  etc., —  had  a  wide  circulation,  and  an  occasional 
admirer  can  still  be  found  who  will  pronounce  them  superior 
to  Cooper's.  They  differ  from  Cooper's  tales  of  the  sea  in 
that  they  portray,  not  the  life  of  the  merchant  or  the  naval 
officer,  but  the  life  of  the  common  sailor  who  ships  "before 
the  mast." 

Superior,   however,    to   all   these   tales   in   quality,   and 


THE    MINOR   ROMANCERS  129 

scarcely  inferior  in  romantic  interest,  is  the  wholly  truthful 
narrative  of  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast.     It  was  written  by 

Richard  Henry  Dana,  Jr.,  son  of  the  author 
Henry  Dana,  of  The  Buccaneers,  and  was  published  in  1840. 

Obliged  by  some  weakness  of  the  eyes  to  suspend 
his  course  of  studies  at  Harvard,  Dana  went  to  sea  in  the 
American  merchant  service,  and  of  the  faithful  record  of  his 
experiences  in  the  journey  around  Cape  Horn  and  trading 
up  and  down  the  coast  of  California  he  made  a  book  that  in 
its  fascination  for  youthful  readers  is  a  rival  not  only  of 
Cooper's  stories  but  almost  of  Robinson  Crusoe  itself. 

Few  romances  of  the  extravagant  type  came  out  of  New 
England.  Even  Dana's  narrative — for  Dana  was  a  New 
Englander — had  the  warrant  of  truth.  For  the  justification 
of  fiction  the  warrant  of  a  moral  purpose  might  serve,  but 
pure  physical  adventure  for  the  mere  entertainment  of  it  was 
little  likely  to  be  tolerated.  And  so,  as  we  search  among  the 
minor  romancers  of  New  England,  we  find  only  such  writers 

as  William  Ware  and  Sylvester  Judd,  both  Uni- 

WilliamWare, 

1797-1852.  tanan  ministers,  and  both  writers  who  enlisted 
I8i3di853  romance  in  the  cause  of  religion.  Ware's  books — 
Zenobia  (first  printed  as  Letters  from  Palmyra, 
1837),  Aurelian  (first  printed  as  Probus,  1838),  and  Julian 
1841) — portray,  with  considerable  learning  and  imagination, 
the  conflict  of  Christianity  and  paganism  in  the  days  of  the 
decline  of  Rome.  It  is  the  type  of  romance  since  made 
familiar  to  us  by  the  greater  work  of  the  English  Kingsley 
and  the  German  Ebers.  Judd's  one  book  of  importance  was 
Margaret,  a  Tale  of  the  Real  and  the  Ideal  (1845),  a  story  at 
once  more  realistic  and  more  fantastic  than  Ware's  stories. 
In  spite  of  its  crudeness  and  prolixity,  it  long  held  a  respec 
table  place  on  New  England  bookshelves,  both  for  its 
vigorous  portraiture  of  Maine  life  and  scenery  and  for  the 
rare  spirituality  which  it  throws  about  its  central  character. 


130  ROMANCE 

Lowell's  rather  extravagant  praise  of  it,  in  his  Fable  for 
Critics,  as 

"the  first  Yankee  book 
With  the  soul  of  Down  East  in't,  and  things  farther  East," 

doubtless  prolonged  its  life.  About  all  we  care  to  preserve 
of  it  is  a  certain  description  of  a  snowstorm  which  has  often 
been  reprinted  and  which  may  well  be  read  for  its  own  sake. 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE,  1804-1864 

From  writers  like  those  just  described  it  is  not  difficult  to 
make  the  transition  to  the  most  spiritual  of  American  roman 
cers — Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  And  it  should  be  noted  in 
passing  that  we  have  returned  once  more,  and  for  a  long  stay, 
to  New  England  soil.  For,  after  Poe,  the  names  of  first 
importance  that  follow  immediately  in  the  wake  of  those 
pioneers  of  our  literature  who  were  considered  in  the  pre 
ceding  chapter,  belong  almost  without  exception  to  New 
England.  The  old  centre  of  literary  activity  regains  its 
prestige:  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore  yield  to 
Boston,  Cambridge,  and  Concord,  and  we  confront  that 
remarkable  group  of  men  who  have  stamped  our  literature 
with  their  own  characteristics  of  courage,  manliness,  and 
ideality.  Why  the  New  England  literary  spirit  should  have 
lain  so  comparatively  dormant  during  the  early  years  of  our 
nationality  is  not  easy  to  say.  Of  course  there  could  not  be 
any  high  development  of  literature  without  a  highly  devel 
oped  sense  of  art,  and  we  have  seen  that  the  Puritan  temper 
was  hostile  to  art,  as  something  savoring  of  luxury  and  vain 
glory,  or  even  idolatry.  The  Puritan  spirit  was  easily 
aroused  in  a  moral  cause,  hardly  in  an  aesthetic  one.  And 
we  cannot  fail  to  note  that  even  of  this  great  group  of  New 
Englanders  who  gave  us  the  body,  as  it  were,  of  our  nine 
teenth  century  literature,  the  majority  were  primarily  schol 
ars,  thinkers,  and  moralists,  and  only  secondarily  artists. 


HAWTHORNE  131 

Emerson,  Thoreau,  Webster,  Whittier,  Lowell,  even  Holmes, 
fought  in  some  cause  of  freedom  or  righteousness.  Only 
Longfellow  in  poetry  and  Hawthorne  in  prose  held  stead 
fastly  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  creation  for  artistic 
ends;  and  Longfellow's  scholastic  and  didactic  instincts  are 
never  far  from  the  surface,  while  in  Hawthorne  the  moral 
purpose  comes  plainly  into  sight.  The  romance,t  however, 
in  the  choice  of  which  as  the  sole  medium  of  his  expression 
Hawthorne  stands  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  group,  is  essen 
tially  a  form  of  pure  art,  and  that  fact  Hawthorne  never 
allowed  himself  to  forget. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne  was  born  at  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
July  4,  1804.  The  absence  of  a  clerical  ancestry  in  his  case  is 
noteworthy,  as  also  in  the  case  of  Longfellow,  the 
other  of  the  great  New  England  writers  in  whom 
we  have  just  remarked  that  the  artistic  bent  was  not  subordi 
nate  to  the  ethical.  Hawthorne's  ancestors  were  magis 
trates,  soldiers,  and  seamen;  one  of  them,  a  judge  during  the 
witchcraft  trials,  dealt  so  harshly  with  an  accused  woman  as 
to  call  down  upon  his  head  a  curse,  and  from  the  story  of 
that  curse  sprang  in  good  time  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables. 
The  father  was  a  sea-captain  who  died  of  a  fever  at  Surinam 
in  1808.  The  mother  spent  the  remainder  of  her  life — forty 
years — in  the  closest  seclusion,  and  the  little  Nathaniel  and 
his  two  sisters  would  have  had  a  dark  time  of  it  but  for  the 
mother's  family,  the  Mannings,  with  whom  they  went  to 
live.  In  1813  they  removed  to  the  Manning  estate  on  the 
Sebago  Lake  in  Maine,  and  it  is  there  that  Hawthorne's 
happiest  years  were  spent.  The  lonely  life  of  nature,  where 
in  summer  he  roamed  through  the  woods  with  his  gun,  or  in 
winter  skated  on  the  lake  until  midnight,  was  at  least  better 
for  him  than  the  lonely,  unsocial  life  of  the  town — all  the 
better,  perhaps,  in  view  of  his  delicate  health  and  his  con 
fessed  "grievous  disinclination  to  go  to  school."  In  due  time, 


132  ROMANCE 

however,  he  was  sent  back  to  Salem  to  prepare  for  college, 
whence  he  wrote  letters  of  playful  complaint  to  his  mother: 

"I  am  quite  reconciled  to  going  to  college,  since  I  am  to  spend 
my  vacation  with  you.  Yet  four  years  of  the  best  part  of  my  life  is  a 
great  deal  to  throw  away.  I  have  not  yet  concluded  what  profession 
I  shall  have.  .  ..  .  Oh  that  I  were  rich  enough  to  live  without  a 
profession!  What  do  you  think  of  my  becoming  an  author,  and 
relying  for  support  upon  my  pen?" 

A  beautiful  and  somew^hat  wilful  youth,  whose  discipline 
had  been  neglected,  he  was  not  always  easy  to  manage,  in 
school  or  out,  and  during  his  residence  at  Bowdoin  College  he 
showed  some  of  the  same  tendencies  as  Poe  toward  dissi 
pation,  at  least  in  its  milder  forms.  But  he  possessed  an 
essentially  noble  nature  and  there  were  no  lasting  evil  results. 
His  more  intimate  college  mates  were  Franklin  Pierce  and 
Horatio  Bridge  (see  the  dedication  of  The  Snow  Image). 
Longfellow  was  a  classmate,  but  there  was  probably  not 
enough  in  common  between  him  and  Longfellow,  who  was 
several  years  his  junior,  to  draw  them  closely  together, 
though  then  and  in  later  life  their  relations  were  always  cordial. 

After  his  graduation  from  Bowdoin  in  1825,  Hawthorne 
entered  upon,  or  rather  drifted  into,  a  strange  mode  of  life. 
Seclusion  Though  strong,  active,  and  apparently  well  fitted 
to  do  his  share  of  the  world's  work,  he  virtually 
disappeared  from  the  world  for  a  period  of  twelve  or  fourteen 
years.  In  the  seclusion  of  his  Salem  home,  "by  some  witch 
craft  or  other  carried  apart  from  the  main  current  of  life," 
in  a  family  whose  members  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  their 
meals  in  their  private  rooms,  scarcely,  he  declared,  seeing  his 
elder  sister  in  three  months,  avoiding  society  and  walking 
out  by  night,  he  was  left  to  pursue  whatever  course  of  intel 
lectual  work  or  idleness  his  fancy  prompted.  He  was 
actually  accomplishing  far  more  than  he  would  have  then 
dared  to  believe.  He  could  dream  undisturbed;  he  was 


HAWTHORNE  133 

quietly  gathering  a  precious  store  of  material,  some  of  which 
may  be  read  now  in  the  American  Note  Books;  he  was  slowly 
perfecting  himself  in  the  art  of  composition ;  and  above  all  he 
was  developing  the  individual  traits  of  his  genius  in  a  way 
that  would  have  been  practically  impossible  had  he  been 
surrounded,  like  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  by  the  diverse  . 
influences  of  travel  and  men  and  books.  He  had  no  very 
definite  purpose.  He  wrote  without  encouragement  and 
almost  without  hope.  A  little  collection  of  seven  tales  was 
sent,  we  are  told,  to  seventeen  publishers  without  success. 
One  hundred  dollars  secured  the  publication  of  Fanshawe  in 
1828,  but  afterward  all  the  copies  of  this  ''literary  folly" 
that  could  be  found  were  destroyed.  Some  later  tales 
fared  better.  Goodrich  published  The  Gentle  Boy  and  three 
others  anonymously  in  his  annual,  The  Token,  for  1832. 
Others  appeared  in  succeeding  issues  of  that  annual  and  in 
various  other  magazines.  This,  added  to  the  help  of  his 
friend  Bridge,  paved  the  way  for  the  publication,  in  1837,  of 
the  first  series  of  Twice-  Told  Tales.  Longfellow  wrote  a  favor 
able  review  of  the  volume  for  the  North  American  Review 
(July,  1837),  and  six  hundred  copies  of  the  book  were  sold. 
The  encouragement  of  this  modest  success,  which  yielded 
him,  by  the  way,  no  money,  had  something  to  do  with  drawing 

him  out  of  his  seclusion,  though  it  may  be  imag- 
vennires.  ined  that  the  process  was  not  easy.  "I  have  made 

a  captive  of  myself,"  he  wrote  to  Longfellow, 
"and  put  me  into  a  dungeon;  and  now  I  cannot  find  the  key  to 
let  myself  out."  But  the  key  was  found.  For  a  hint  of  the 
manner,  read  the  entry  in  the  American  Note  Books  under 
October  4,  1840.  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody  had  discovered 
Hawthorne  through  his  writings,  and  Hawthorne,  through 
Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody,  had  discovered  her  beautiful  and 
gifted  young  invalid  sister,  Sophia  Peabody.  The  deep 
affection  that  sprung  up  between  these  two  was  the  spur  so 


134  ROMANCE 

much  needed.  The  first  result  was  decidedly  practical. 
Hawthorne  secured  a  position,  which  he  held  for  two  years, 
as  weigher  and  gauger  in  the  Boston  Custom  House  under 
George  Bancroft, — a  position  in  which  he  learned  with  a  kind 
of  amused  surprise  that  there  are  other  "duties"  in  this  world 
besides  moral  and  religious  ones.  The  next  result  was  more 
visionary.  In  1841  he  joined  the  experimenters  at  Brook 
Farm,  an  agricultural  community  established  under  the 
leadership  of  George  Ripley.*  He  spent  a  fairly  happy 
year  there,  but  abandoned  his  investment  of  a  thousand 
dollars  the  second  spring,  satisfied  that  it  was  not  the  life  for 
him.  He  learned  a  little  about  farming — that  is  to  say,  he 
hoed  potatoes  and  milked  cows — and  a  great  deal  about 
human  nature,  and  he  carried  away  experiences  that  were 
later  woven  into  The  Blithedale  Romance. 

In  1842  he  married  Sophia  Peabody  and  took  up,  courage 
ously  enough,  a  life  of  poverty,  hard  literary  work,  and  per 
fect  domestic  happiness  at  Concord,!  in  the  Old 

Success. 

Manse,  which  had  already  been  Emerson's  home. 
There  he  came  to  know  and  value  the  friendship  of  Emerson, 
who,  we  may  well  believe,  was  the  inspiration  of  the  allegory 
of  The  Great  Stone  Face.  Thoreau  on  a  time  sold  him  a  boat; 
and  there  are  memories  of  all  three  skating  on  the  river — 
Emerson  wearily,  Hawthorne  gracefully,  Thoreau  fantasti 
cally.  There,  too,  he  was  brought  into  some  contact  with 
Alcott  and  Margaret  Fuller  and,  in  short,  the  whole  circle  of 
Concord  "philosophers."  He  published  a  second  volume  of 
Twice-Told  Tales  in  1842  and  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse  in 
1846.  In  the  latter  year  an  appointment  to  the  Custom 
House  at  Salem,  under  the  Democratic  administration  of 
Polk,  took  him  back  to  his  native  town.  His  duties  there 
gave  him  little  time  for  writing,  and  when,  three  years  later, 

*  See  Chapter  VI. 

t  This  Concord,  so  famous  in  American  letters,  is  the  Massachusetts  Concord,  also  famous 
in  American  history,  and  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  New  Hampshire  capital. 


HAWTHORNE  135 

a  change  of  administration  left  him  again  without  a  position, 
his  wife  said  to  him  encouragingly,  "Now  you  can  write  your 
book!"  The  book  thus  referred  to  was  promptly  written, 
and  early  in  1850  ten  thousand  people,  in  America  and  Eng 
land  were  reading  The  Scarlet  Letter — up  to  the  present  day, 
it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  affirm,  the  central  book  of  American 
literature.  It  is  possible  that,  if  this  success  had  been  antici 
pated — and  there  was  nothing  in  Hawthorne's  earlier  exper 
ience  to  lead  to  such  an  anticipation — he  would  have  touched 
more  lightly  certain  passages  in  the  introductory  sketch  of 
the  Custom  House.  However  that  be,  the  sketch  gave 
considerable  offense  to  his  Salem  fellow-townsmen,  and  it  was 
therefore  not  without  satisfaction  on  his  part  that  he  carried 
out  plans  already  made  for  a  final  removal  from  the  place. 
He  cherished  no  ill-will;  and  Salem,  on  her  part,  has  since  been 
proud  to  point  out  the  site  of  the  Town  Pump  and  the  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables. 

The  story  of  the  remainder  of  his  life  may  be  briefly  told. 
With  his  family  (there  were  two  children,  Una  and  Julian — 

Rose  was  born  shortly  afterward) ,  he  removed  first 
Xd^SSS"  to  Lenox,  among  the  Berkshire  Hills  in  Western 

Massachusetts.  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables., 
published  in  1851,  was  written  there;  there  too  were  written 
and  read  and  re-read  to  the  children  before  publication  The 
Wonder-Book  and  The  Snow  Image  and  Other  Twice-Told 
Tales.  The  next  move  was  to  West  Newton,  a  suburb  of 
Boston,  and  thence,  in  1852,  back  to  Concord,  where  he  had 
purchased  Alcott's  house,  which  he  named  "The  Wayside." 
The  Blithedale  Romance  appeared  in  that  year,  and  Tangle- 
wood  Tales  in  the  following.  Then  came  his  appointment  as 
consul  at  Liverpool  under  the  administration  of  his  old 
friend,  Franklin  Pierce.  After  four  years  in  England  he 
resigned  his  consulship  and  spent  several  years  in  travel  on 
the  continent,  passing  two  winters  at  Rome.  Here  The 


136  ROMANCE 

Marble  Faun  was  conceived  (his  own  daughter,  Una,  was  the 
model  of  the  spiritual  Hilda),  to  be  written  out  at  Florence 
and  in  England,  and  published  at  London  and  Boston  in 
1860.  The  title  of  the  English  edition  was  Transformation. 
In  June  of  1860  he  returned  to  Concord.  More  literary 
work  was  projected — Septimius  Felton,  The  Dolliver  Romance, 
Dr.  Grimshawe's  Secret — but  it  was  not  his  fortune  to  write 
any  more  in  peace,  and  nothing  was  completed.  He  was 
deeply  agitated  by  the  Civil  War,  the  more  so  because  his 
sympathies  were  not  wholly  with  his  Northern  friends;  he 
was  in  constant  concern  for  the  health  of  his  idolized  Una; 
and  his  own  health  was  rapidly  failing.  In  March,  1864,  at 
the  urgent  desire  of  his  friends,  he  set  out  for  the  South  in  the 
companionship  of  his  publisher,  W.  D.  Ticknor,  only  to  see 
Ticknor  die  suddenly  at  Philadelphia.  A  few  weeks  later  he 
and  ex-president  Pierce  started  northward  on  a  similar  excur 
sion.  But  Ticknor's  fate  became  also  his  own.  He  died 
peacefully,  on  the  nineteenth  of  May,  in  a  hotel  at  Plymouth, 
New  Hampshire.  Longfellow,  Emerson,  Whittier,  Pierce, 
Agassiz,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  many  other  friends  stood  by 
the  grave  where  he  was  buried  at  Concord,  on  the  "hill- top 
hearsed  with  pines."  The  unfinished  Dolliver  Romance  lay 
on  his  coffin  during  the  funeral;  and  shortly  afterward 
Longfellow  wrote  his  beautiful  tribute : — 

"Ah!  who  shall  lift  that  wand  of  magic  power, 

And  the  lost  clew  regain? 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 
Unfinished  must  remain." 

As  the  years  go  by,  it  becomes  more  and  more  apparent 
that  Hawthorne's  is  quite  the  rarest  genius  that  has  been 
fostered  on  the  bleak  New  England  shore.  To  analyze  that 
genius,  or  even  to  appraise  it  rightly,  is  no  easy  task.  Yet 
the  task  is  rendered  less  difficult  by  the  essentially  simple 
nature  of  the  man.  From  first  to  last  Hawthorne  worked 


HAWTHORNE  137 

steadfastly  in  a  single  direction.  One  concession  to  friendship 
he  made  when  he  wrote  a  campaign  biography  of  Franklin 

Pierce,  and  another  later  when  he  dedicated  to  the 
nessSo?Aim.  same  friend  the  fruits  of  his  consular  experience — 

the  charming  sketches  of  English  life  and  scenery 
in  Our  Old  Home.  Apart  from  these,  he  never  allowed  him 
self  to  be  enticed  from  the  path  along  which  his  genius  urged 
him.  He  seemed  to  understand  precisely  the  nature,  if  not 
entirely  the  scope,  of  his  powers;  and  he  never  felt  around 
for  something  better  or  easier  or  pleasanter  to  do.  He 
burned  many  manuscripts,  but  they  were  all  experiments  in 
the  one  direction  of  prose  romance,  the  necessary  apprentice 
work  by  which  he  perfected  himself  in  his  difficult  art. 
Even  the  various  Note  Books  that  were  published  after  his 
death  were  but  gathered  threads  of  experience  to  be  woven 
at  a  favorable  opportunity  into  the  magic  web  of  his  dreams. 
On  the  basis  of  form  it  is  possible  to  make  a  division  of 
his  imaginative  work  into  short  tales  and  long  romances, 

though  their  substantial  singleness  of  character 

remains.  The  tales  were  written  and  published 
at  intervals  through  the  early  and  middle  portions  of  his  life. 
Some  of  the  lightest  and  brightest  were  directly  addressed  to 
children — the  pleasant  little  histories  and  biographies  of 
Grandfather's  Chair,  and  the  delightful  modernized  versions 
of  Greek  arid  Roman  myths  in  the  Wonder-Book  and  Tangle- 
wood  Tales.  Stronger,  and  higher  in  aim,  are  the  eighty  or 
more  narratives  and  sketches  that  make  up  the  several  vol 
umes  of  Tivice-Told  Tales  and  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse. 
Very  slight  is  the  material  of  which  most  of  them  are  con 
structed — an  image  of  snow,  a  profile-shaped  mass  of  rock, 
a  toll-gatherer  on  his  bridge,  an  old  witch  and  her  pipe,  an 
artist  making  a  mechanical  butterfly.  Yet  they  hold  us 
both  by  the  variety  of  their  outward  charm  and  by  their  deep 
inner  significance.  They  run  through  the  whole  gamut  of 


138  ROMANCE 

fancy,  from  the  wildly  whimsical  and  humorous  to  the 
intensely  sombre  and  profoundly  sad.  And  woven  into  them, 
as  the  very  life  and  substance  of  them,  are  speculations  upon 
many  of  the  gravest  problems  of  existence.  Indeed,  more  of 
the  spiritual  history  of  New  England  may  be  found  in  a  single 
tale  like  Young  Goodman  Brown  or  The  Minister's  Black  Veil, 
than  in  a  hundred  sermons  of  the  theologians.  The  material 
setting  is  soon  discovered  to  be  only  a  screen  upon  which  to 
throw  the  spiritual  portrait. 

The  long  romances,  of  which  but  four  stand  completed, 
differ  from  the  tales  chiefly  in  their  greater  elaborateness  and 
sharper  delineation  of  character.  The  Scarlet  Letter  was  the 
first  to  be  written  and  published.  Poking  among 
the  documentary  rubbish  of  the  custom  house  at 
Salem,  the  author  had  brought  to  light  a  mysterious  scrap  of 
old  scarlet  cloth  with  a  few  pages  of  explanatory  record.  Im 
mediately  his  imagination  began  to  work.  Out  of  the  haze  of 
two  centuries  the  New  England  of  the  days  when  Richard 
Bellingham  sat  in  the  governor's  chair  gradually  arose;  the 
streets  of  Boston  were  peopled  with  hooded  women,  and 
bearded  men  in  steeple-crowned  hats;  the  jail,  the  pillory, 
the  whipping-post,  the  finger  of  scorn,  the  badge  of  dishonor 
— all  the  grim  accessories  of  the  Puritan  tribunal  of  justice, 
became  once  more  as  things  of  reality;  and  upon  this  back 
ground  was  projected  the  sorrowful  drama  of  two  sinning 
human  hearts,  the  one  persecuted  and  the  other  self -tor 
mented  even  beyond  their  sinning.  Such  was  the  substance 
of  The  Scarlet  Letter,  a  chapter  out  of  old  Puritan  life  in  New 
England,  the  work  of  a  professed  romancer,  creating  and 
analyzing  rather  than  recording,  yet  more  compelling  in  its 
truthfulness  than  the  most  painstaking  of  histories. 

Perhaps  no  one  of  the  three  other  romances  quite  equals 
The  Scarlet  Letter  in  imaginative  insight  or  dramatic  intensity, 
though  taken  together  they  show  better  the  range  of  the 


HAWTHORNE  139 

author's  genius.  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  which  is 
likely  to  yield  greater  pleasure  to  the  ordinary  reader,  pre 
sents  a  more  modern  phase  of  the  old  New  England  life,  with 
somewhat  less  of  analysis  and  more  of  movement.  The 
Blithedale  Romance  strikes  farthest  out  of  the  Hawthornian 
track,  coming  humanly  near  to  our  work-a-day  world  and 
presenting  characters  that  seem  almost  more  real  than  the 
real  men  and  women,  now  fading  into  shadows,  who  once 
peopled  the  high-hearted  community  at  Brook  Farm.  The 
Marble  Faun,  which  was  written  last,  during  the  years  abroad, 
differs  outwardly  from  the  others  in  having  its  scene  laid  in 
Italy,  and  the  story  resolves  itself  into  what,  for  those  who 
do  not  understand  the  purposes  of  Hawthorne,  is  only  tan 
talizing  mystery.  Yet  it,  like  the  others,  is  devoted  to  the 
illumination  of  moral  problems,  and  the  characters  are  delin 
eated  with  the  same  strength  and  delicacy,  while  in  some  of 
its  aspects  it  reveals  the  handiwork  of  a  man  still  further 
enriched  by  knowledge  and  ripened  by  experience. 

The  final  seal  of  security  upon  Hawthorne's  work  is  the 
style  in  which  it  is  written.  Airy,  sparkling,  graceful,  flow 
ing,  pellucid — the  style  is  all  these  and  much  more. 
Hawthorne  plays  upon  language  as  upon  an  instru 
ment  of  many  stops,  and  the  swiftest  changes,  from  irony  to 
pity  and  from  humor  to  pathos,  are  made  without  a  discor 
dant  note.  Better,  however,  than  any  description  will  be  an 
example ;  and  we  choose,  from  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables, 
the  picture  of  the  hard-hearted  Judge  Pyncheon  overtaken  by 
the  ancestral  curse  and  sitting  dead  in  his  chair  while  one 
by  one  the  hours  of  his  appointments  to  business  duties  or 
social  pleasures  creep  steadily  by : 

"Well!  it  is  absolutely  too  late  for  dinner!  Turtle,  salmon,  tautog, 
woodcock,  boiled  turkey,  Southdown  mutton,  pig,  roast  beef,  have 
vanished,  or  exist  only  in  fragments,  with  lukewarm  potatoes,  and 
gravies  crusted  over  with  cold  fat.  The  judge,  had  he  done  nothing 


140  ROMANCE 

else,  would  have  achieved  wonders  with  his  knife  and  fork.  It  was  he, 
you  know,  of  whom  it  used  to  be  said,  in  reference  to  his  ogre-like 
appetite,  that  his  Creator  made  him  a  great  animal,  but  that  the  dinner- 
hour  made,  him  a  great  beast.  Persons  of  his  large  sensual  endowments 
must  claim  indulgence,  at  their  feeding  time.  But,  for  once,  the  judge 
is  entirely 'too  late  for  dinner!  Too  late,  we  fear,  even  to  join  the  party 
at  their  wine!  The  guests  are  warm  and  merry;  they  have  given  up  the 
judge;  and,  concluding  that  the  free-soilers  have  him,  they  will  fix  upon 
another  candidate.  Were  our  friend  now  to  stalk  in  among  them,  with 
that  wide-open  stare,  at  once  wild  and  stolid,  his  ungenial  presence 
would  be  apt  to  change  their  cheer.  Neither  would  it  be  seemly  in 
Judge  Pyncheon,  generally  so  scrupulous  in  his  attire,  to  show  himself 
at  a  dinner-table  with  that  crimson  stain  upon  his  shirt-bosom.  By-the- 
by,  how  came  it  there?  It  is  an  ugly  sight,  at  any  rate;  and  the  wisest 
way  for  the  judge  is  to  button  his  coat  closely  over  his  breast,  and,  tak 
ing  his  horse  and  chaise  from  the  livery-stable,  to  make  all  speed  to 
his  own  house.  There,  after  a  glass  of  brandy  and  water,  and  a  mutton- 
chop,  a  beef-steak,  a  broiled  fowl,  or  some  such  hasty  little  dinner  and 
supper  all  in  one,  he  had  better  spend  the  evening  by  the  fire-side.  He 
must  toast  his  slippers  a  long  while,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  chilliness 
which  the  air  of  this  vile  old  house  has  sent  curdling  through  his  veins. 

"Up,  therefore,  Judge  Pyncheon,  up!  You  have  lost  a  day.  But 
to-morrow  will  be  here  anon.  Will  you  rise,  betimes,  and  make  the 
most  of  it?  To-morrow!  To-morrow!  To-morrow!  We,  that  are 
alive,  may  rise  betimes  to-morrow.  As  for  him  that  has  died  to 
day,  his  morrow  will  be  the  resurrection  morn. 

"  Meanwhile  the  twilight  is  glooming  upward  out  of  the  corners 
of  the  room.  The  shadows  of  the  tall  furniture  grow  deeper,  and  at 
first  become  more  definite;  then,  spreading  wider,  they  lose  their 
distinctness  of  outline  in  the  dark  gray  tide  of  oblivion,  as  it  were, 
that  creeps  slowly  over  the  various  objects,  and  the  one  human  figure 
sitting  in  the  midst  of  them.  The  gloom  has  not  entered  from  without; 
it  has  brooded  here  all  day,  and  now,  taking  its  own  inevitable  time, 
will  possess  itself  of  everything.  The  judge's  face,  indeed,  rigid,  and 
singularly  white,  refuses  to  melt  into  this  universal  solvent.  Fainter 
and  fainter  grows  the  light.  It  is  as  if  another  double  handful  of  dark 
ness  had  been  scattered  through  the  air.  Now  it  is  no  longer  gray,  but 
sable.  There  is  still  a  faint  appearance  at  the  window;  neither  a  glow, 
nor  a  gleam,  nor  a  glimmer, — any  phrase  of  light  would  express  some 
thing  far  brighter  than  this  doubtful  perception,  or  sense,  rather,  that 
there  i.s  a  window  there.  Has  it  yet  vanished?  No! — yes! — not  quite! 


HAWTHORNE  141 

/\nd  there  is  still  the  swarthy  whiteness — we  shall  venture  to  marry 
these  ill-agreeing  words — the  swarthy  whiteness  of  Judge  Pyncheon's 
face.  The  features  are  all  gone;  there  is  only  the  paleness  of  them  left. 
And  how  looks  it  now?  There  is  no  window!  There  is  no  face!  An 
infinite  inscrutable  blackness  has  annihilated  sight!  Where  is  our 
universe?  All  crumbled  away  from  us;  and  we,  adrift  in  chaos,  may 
hearken  to  the  gusts  of  homeless  wind,  that  go  sighing  and  murmur 
ing  about  in  quest  of  what  was  once  a  world! " 

Hawthorne's  romanticism,  to  turn  from  his  style  to  the 

atmosphere  which  envelops  tales  and  romances  alike,  is  of  a 

de  Pecuuar  type,  strangely  linking  the  past  with  the 

toward  present  and  the  remote  with  the  near.     The  Ger- 

Romance.  .  .         . 

man  romantic  movement,  with  its  return  to  feud 
alism  and  mysticism,  did  not  allure  him.  He  never  fell,  as 
did  Irving  and  Longfellow,  under  the  enchantment  of 
mediaeval  history  and  legend.  True,  he  named  his  eldest 
daughter  "Una,"  after  Spenser's  heroine,  but  only  "to  take 
the  name  out  of  the  realm  of  Faery."  Certain  old  super 
stitions  had  a  charm  for  him — witchcraft,  for  instance,  and 
demonology;  and  his  fancy  was  continually  playing  with  the 
pseudo-science  of  alchemy.  But  these  things  were  used  only 
for  their  symbolism — he  never  took  them  seriously;  he  might 
have  borrowed  from  Ariosto  or  Cervantes  the  suspicion  of 
banter  in  his  tone. 

We  might  liken  him  to  Brockden  Brown,  if  Brown  had  not 
attempted  to  construct  spiritual  dramas  out  of  such  forced 
and  mechanical  situations.  Or  we  might  liken  him  to  Poe, 
who  was  fully  his  equal  in  art,  if  only  Poe  had  imported  more 
of  the  human  element  into  his  eerie  fancies.  Two  points  of 
contact  with  those  strange  spirits  he  certainly  had, — his 
proneness  to  psychological  analysis,  and  his  preference  of  that 
mysterious  border  land  of  human  life  which,  if  we  may  not 
call  it  the  supernatural,  we  must  yet  call  the  preternatural.* 

*  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  one  of  two  poems  which  he  appears  to  have  written  is  in  the 
measure  and  much  in  the  spirit  of  Coleridge's  Ancient  Manner.  See  Stedman's  American 
Anthology. 


142  ROMANCE 

He  felt  assured  that  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth 
than  were  dreamed  of  in  the  philosophy  of  the  utilitarians. 
The  world  of  hard  matter-of-fact,  of  cold  calculation  of  daily 
needs,  of  supply  and  demand,  of  use,  of  convenience,  of  profit, 
was  not  the  world  to  engage  his  fancy.  We  cannot  imagine 
him  making  a  novel  out  of  a  journalist's  career  or  laying  his 
scenes  in  the  wheat  pit  or  the  divorce  court.  The  realists 
might  have  the  real  world  and  welcome;  he  preferred  that 
twilight  world  of  the  fancy  where  objects  take  on  all  the 
strange  shapes  imaginable,  and  where,  if  beauty  is  not,  we 
can  still  create  it  at  will. 

Yet  his  work,  as  has  been  hinted,  is  never  without  ground 
in  actuality.     He  may  see  fantastic  visions  in  the  clouds,  but 

his  feet  are  always  on  the  earth.     He  treads  airily 
d    but  securely.     He  was  afraid  of  mysticism;  he 

shied  at  transcendentalism,  though  caught  for  a 
time  by  one  of  its  vagaries.  Dreams  were  very  fine,  as 
dreams,  but  he  soon  saw  the  mistake  of  confounding  them 
with  reality — a  lesson  learned  possibly  at  Brook  Farm.  At 
any  rate,  he  came  to  know  accurately  the  line  that  divides 
the  ideal  from  the  real.  It  is  true  there  are  many  things  in 
his  tales  that  will  not  square  with  experience.  Whoever 
reads  for  the  first  time  Feathertop,  or  Young  Goodman  Brown, 
or  The  Snow  Image,  or  The  Birlh-Mark,  or  Rappaccini's 
Daughter,  is  likely  to  rub  his  eyes  to  see  if  he  is  awake.  Don- 
atello's  ears  are  a  perpetual  mystery.  But  we  soon  learn  the 
symbolic  intent  of  these  wild  fancies.  Often,  indeed,  Haw 
thorne  entirely  rationalizes  the  fancies,  or  leaves  them  with 
but  a  faint  suggestion  of  the  miraculous.  Maule's  well 
turned  bitter  when  a  house  was  built  over  Maule's  unquiet 
grave;  but  we  are  reminded  that  the  sources  might  have  been 
disturbed  in  digging  the  deep  foundations.  It  is  to  such 
methods  as  this,  of  which  our  example  is  but  one  of  a  hun 
dred,  methods  which  Brown  used  so  bunglingly,  that  Haw- 


HAWTHORNE  143 

thorne  owes  his  secure  tread.  However  wide  the  excursion 
of  his  fancy,  he  is  careful  not  to  lose  the  way;  and  so  he  never 
loses  even  the  most  prosaic  reader's  confidence.  This  is  his 
immense  advantage  over  Poe. 

A  further  proof  of  Hawthorne's  foot-hold  in  actuality  is  to 
be  found  in  some  of  his  chosen  themes  and  scenes.  His  love 
for  nature  never  amounted  to  a  passion,  whether  sentimental 
or  scientific,  but  he  was  acutely  sensitive  to  the  charms  of 
outdoor  life,  as  a  dozen  sympathetic  sketches  like  Buds  and 
Bird  Voices  and  The  Old  Manse  testify.  He  localizes  strongly, 
too.  His  Old  Manse  stands  in  marked  contrast  to  the  Do 
main  of  Arnheim  or  the  Landor's  Cottage  of  Poe's  dreams. 
Ethan  Brand,  we  know,  was,  in  spite  of  his  diabolical  laugh,  a 
plain  man  who  burned  lime  in  the  New  England  hills ;  but  who 
was  Roderick  Usher  and  where  did  he  dwell?  The  Great 
Stone  Face  may  be  seen  today;  who  but  Poe  ever  saw  the 
Masquers  of  the  Red  Death?  And  there  are  the  Town 
Pump  and  the  Salem  Custom  House  and  the  Catacombs  of 
Rome.  Assuredly,  in  its  external  features,  this  world  of 
Hawthorne's  romances  is  our  world,  though  it  must  be 
admitted,  too,  that  there  is  always  something  added  or  some 
thing  taken  away  that  makes  it  seem  like  another  world. 
Of  course  there  is  idealization.  We  are  not  to  suppose  that 
Blithedale  is  an  absolutely  faithful  picture  of  Brook  Farm. 
Donatello  the  Faun  bears  little  resemblance  to  Maurice 
Hewlett's  Italians.  And  The  Scarlet  Letter,  with  its  scene 
laid  at  the  author's  very  door,  reverts  to  the  New  England 
of  the  past,  where  the  fancy  can  at  need  escape  from  the 
bounds  of  the  actual.  We  readily  perceive  the  difference 
when  we  pass  from  the  prologue  of  the  Custom  House  to  the 
story  proper.  Yet  The  Scarlet  Letter  is  a  tale  that  by  ideal 
izing  attains  a  more  perfect  verisimilitude  than  is  ever 
attained  by  photographic  realism,  becoming,  one  must 
almost  think,  the  final  portrayal  of  Puritanism. 


144  ROMANCE 

The  characters  of  the  stories,  which  are  always  few  in 
number,  may  be,  best  described  as  possessing  precisely  this 
same  peculiarity  of  seeming  at  once  real  and  unreal.  They 
act  normally  and  rationally.  They  move  amid  natural 
surroundings.  They  say  "Good-morning,"  and  "Ah,  I  see," 
and  "Shut  the  door."  They  are  neither  like  the  caricatures 
of  Dickens  nor  like  the  impossible  creatures  of  the  old  ro 
mances,  who  are  always  doing  impossible  things.  But 
neither  are  they  like  the  characters  of  the  realists;  that  is  to 
say,  they  are  not  exactly  the  sort  of  people  we  have  met  or 
ever  quite  expect  to  meet.  It  is  because,  as  we  have  seen, 
Hawthorne  preferred  to  move  in  that  border  land  of  spiritual 
life  where  fancy  and  speculation  will  always  run  in  advance 
of  observation  and  knowledge.  He  does  not  shun  the  actual; 
he  simply  rejects  a  large  part  of  the  actions  and  motives  that 
enter  into  every-day  life  as  unsuited  to  his  purpose,  and 
allows  his  characters  to  be  governed  in  every  thought  and 
deed  by  those  principles  of  good  or  evil  conduct  which  the 
ordinary  man  knows  well  enough,  but  of  which  he  is  most  of 
the  time  scarcely  conscious.  There  is  in  his  characters  so 
much  of  the  truth  of  inner  life  that  they  seem  to  be  untrue  to 
outer  life  without  really  being  so.  One  wonders  how,  shyly 
and  aloof  as  he  lived,  he  came  to  understand  so  well  the  heart 
of  man.  One  is  tempted  to  say  that  by  some  special  dispen 
sation  he  was  given  worldly  wisdom  without  contact  with  the 
world.  Contact  he  undoubtedly  had  in  his  unobtrusive 
way — in  his  walks  through  New  England  and  in  his  Custom 
House  and  consular  life.  But  it  need  not  have  been  exten 
sive;  one  experience  would  enrich  him  more  than  a  dozen 
would  enrich  other  men.  His  Note  Books,  the  great  key  to  his 
character,  show  this:  his  habit  of  noting  and  meditating 
made  each  single  experience  fruitful.  His  imagination,  too, 
enabled  him  to  learn  as  by  divination.  He  did  not  need  to 
fight  a  duel;  his  friend  Cilley  fell  in  a  duel  and  he  got  the  whole 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE 
RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON 


HENRY   DAVID   THOREAU 
EDGAR   ALLAN    POE 


HAWTHORNE  145 

spiritual  experience.  We  know  that  he  had,  however  it  was 
obtained,  that  admixture  of  worldliness  so  necessary  to 
breadth  of  genius. 

Yet  catholic  as  were  his  sympathies,  it  was  the  darker 

phases  of  the  interior  drama  that  moved  him  when  he  came  to 

write.     Balzac  wrote  what  he  called  the  Human 

Shadow  of      Comedy.     Hawthorne's  work,  so  much  narrower 

Puritanism. 

in  scope  and  so  much  more  intense  in  its  seizure  of 
sin  and  sorrow,  grappling  with  moral  problems  often  to  the 
exclusion  of  intellectual  and  aesthetic  ones,  might  well  be 
called  the  Human  Tragedy.  He  has  sometimes  been 
described  as  morbid,  but  that  is  not  the  right  word.  His  own 
tone  and  attitude  are  thoroughly  healthy,  though  he  does  not 
always  keep  in  the  sunshine.  There  is  a  large  leaven  of 
humor  in  his  work,  and  humor  of  the  most  genuine,  spon 
taneous  kind.  It  would  be  interesting,  if  we  had  space,  to 
follow  it  through  such  a  book  as  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables, 
from  the  early  chapters  where  it  bubbles  genially  over  the 
little  boy  and  his  weakness  for  gingerbreads,  to  the  final 
phases  of  its  subdued  yet  pitiless  play  about  the  stricken 
Judge.  Yet  even  there  it  only  serves  to  throw  the  over 
hanging  shadow  of  the  book  into  darker  relief.  And  Haw 
thorne  knew  it.  He  longed  to  write  "a  sunshiny  book." 
It  was  not  that  he  loved  the  gloom,  as  the  term  "morbid" 
would  seem  to  imply,  but  only  that  he  could  not  shut  his 
eyes  to  it. 

Beyond  question,  the  one  fact  of  life  and  the  world  which 
to  Hawthorne  looms  larger  than  all  others,  is  the  fact  of  sin. 
This,  too,  is  the  Puritan  inheritance,  though  he  is  so  far 
emancipated  as  to  see  the  sin  of  Puritanism  itself,  and  in  The 
Scarlet  Letter  the  sin  of  Hester  Prynne  pales  before  the  sin  of 
her  Puritan  persecutors.  But  the  shadows  have  only  shifted 
— in  one  form  or  another  the  problem  of  evil  holds  for  him  an 
unconquerable  fascination.  In  Ethan  Brand  he  plays  with 


146  ROMANCE 

the  idea  of  the  Unpardonable  Sin,  which  he  logically  enough 
makes  to  be  the  continual  barring  out  of  good  influences. 
In  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  it  is  the  problem  of  inherited 
evil  tendencies,  made  into  romance  by  the  fiction  of  an  ances 
tral  curse.  In  The  Scarlet  Letter  it  is  the  sin  of  nature  against 
conscience,  offset  by  the  sins  of  social  and  religious  creed 
against  nature,  and  complicated  by  the  sins  of  hypocrisy  and 
revenge.  In  The  Marble  Faun  it  is  the  old  drama  of  the 
temptation  and  the  fall  of  man.  Yet  these  sombre  themes 
are  not  used  to  morbid  ends.  Sin  itself  is  clearly  shown 
to  be  educative,  playing  a  useful  part  in  the  beneficent 
plan  of  the  world.  It  does  not,  of  course,  lead  to  happi 
ness,  for  the  suffering  and  sorrow  are  necessary  parts  of  the 
education;  but  we  mark  Hester  Prynne's  broadened  and 
sweetened  nature,  and  we  know  that  Arthur  Dimmesdale 
the  innocent  would  never  have  attained  to  the  spirituality  of 
Arthur  Dimmesdale  the  guilty.  And  Donatello,  the  happy, 
the  ignorant,  the  child-like,  the  faun-like,  loves,  commits  mur 
der,  and  steps  at  once  into  the  common  human  inheritance  of 
knowledge  and  sorrow  and  hope.  It  is  of  such  material  as 
this  that  the  world's  great  books  are  made. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  Hawthorne's  style.  Let  a 
final  word  be  said  of  his  art  in  its  larger  aspects.  The  secret 
of  its  greatness  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  not  some 
thing  added  to  the  man,  but  that,  however  care 
fully  cultivated,  it  is  at  bottom  a  genuine  self-expression. 
When  a  Longfellow  writes  a  poem  like  Hiawatha  we  admire 
the  art,  but  we  know  it  to  be  largely  mechanical — a  thing  of 
much  study  and  experiment.  A  Hawthorne  writes  as  he 
must.  It  was  one  of  Emerson's  theories  that  worthy  matter 
may  safely  be  left  to  find  its  own  form.  Hawthorne  wrote 
greatly  and  nobly  because  he  felt  greatly  and  nobly.  He 
invested  art  with  an  almost  religious  sanctity.  He  could 
stoop  to  no  tricks;  he  could  not  even  try  to  meet  the  taste  of 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE  147 

the  public.  He  envied  Longfellow  for  his  popularity,  but 
he  felt  that  he  must  go  his  own  way  even  though  he  hardly 
knew  where  food  for  his  family  was  to  come  from.  Fame  or 
popularity  did  not  enter  into  his  calculations.  He  was  one 
more  artist  who,  after  Emerson's  ideal,  "wrought  in  a  sad 
sincerity." 

HARRIET  BEECHER  STOWE,  1812-1896 

It  would  be  in  some  degree  an  abuse  of  terms  to  include  in 
a  chapter  on  romance  such  distinctly  moral  and  instructive 
tales  as  the  once  popular  story  of  The  Lamplighter  (1853)  by 
Maria  S.  Cummins,  of  Salem,  or  the  juvenile  Rollo  and  Lucy 
Books  which  from  1830  onward  Jacob  Abbott,  a  Maine  clergy 
man,  used  to  turn  out  by  the  score.  Nor  is  a  history  of  litera 
ture  imperatively  called  upon  to  take  account  of  such  as  these. 
But  they  are  at  least  interesting  as  showing  the  purposeful 
nature  of  the  New  England  temperament — so  purposeful  that 
even  its  popular  fiction,  no  less  than  its  creations  of  a  finer 
art,  moved  along  sober  lines  to  didactic  ends.  It  is  precisely 
this  nature  that  was  brought  to  the  creation  of  a  book  which 
not  only  far  transcended  these  and  all  other  American  novels 
in  popularity,  but  which  rose  almost  to  the  level  of  great 
literature.  That  book,  of  course,  was  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin, 
and  its  author  was  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 

It  is  not  to  be  understood  that  Mrs.  Stowe  wrote  very  con 
sciously  toward  the  end  she  served,  but  only  that  when  she 
came  to  write  she  brought  to  the  work  all  the  moral  convic 
tion  which  arose  from  New  England  birth  in  a  family  of 
divines.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  her  book  was  produced  in  a 
rather  haphazard  fashion.  Her  early  married  years  were 
spent  at  Cincinnati,  where  she  had  some  opportunities  of 
becoming  acquainted  with  Southern  life,  including  the  insti 
tution  of  slave-holding.  It  was  later,  in  1851,  when  she  was 
living  at  Brunswick,  Maine,  where  her  husband  was  a  pro 
fessor  in  Bowdoin  College,  that  she  was  asked  by  the  editor 


148  ROMANCE 

of  the  Washington  National  Era  to  write  for  his  paper  a 
sketch  of  slave  life.  She  wrote  out  and  sent  him  the  scene  of 
"The  Death  of  Uncle  Tom."  The  attention  which  this 
sketch  excited  moved  her  to  add  other  scenes,  and  in  1852 
the  entire  novel,  thus  irregularly  put  together,  was  published. 
The  sales  ran  at  once  into  the  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  the 
influence  which  the  book  had  in  helping  to  crystallize  the 
slowly  gathering  sentiment  against  slave-holding  is  quite 
incalculable.  The  characters  of  Uncle  Tom,  Topsy,  little 
Eva,  Miss  Ophelia,  St.  Clair,  Marks,  Legree,  fixed  them 
selves  at  once  in  the  popular  fancy  as  so  many  real  persons. 

Indeed,  the  book  was  in  intent  more  a  novel  than  a  ro 
mance,  for  Mrs.  Stowe  aimed  to  set  forth  life  as  it  really  was. 
Readers  of  course  made  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  all 
slavery  was  as  bad  as  the  one  picture  of  it  which  she  drew,  and 
so  she  was  often  charged  with  exaggeration.  But  that  she 
meant  to  be  just,  and  that  she  was  aiming,  not  at  a  section  of 
people,  but  at  a  national  crime,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  some 
of  the  best  characters  in  the  book  are  Southerners,  wrhile  the 
brutal  slave-driver  is  of  the  North.  The  story  is  deficient 
in  many  points  of  art,  but  it  has  the  art  of  life — real  people 
and  real  passions,  humor,  pathos,  dramatic  situation  and 
action — and  this,  even  apart  from  its  political  and  social 
interest,  would  doubtless  have  carried  it  well  into  favor. 

Yet  the  strength  of  the  book  on  this  point  is  scarcely  suffi 
cient  to  insure  its  future  vitality.  If  the  extent  of  a  writer's 
audience  and  the  measure  of  his  immediate  influence  were 
the  final  tests,  and  not  artistic  excellence  and  the  measure 
of  his  insight  into  the  eternal  verities  of  the  human  spirit, 
Mrs.  Stowe  would  deserve  to  stand  with  the  major  novelists 
of  her  time.  But  the  book  to  which  her  fame  is  inseparably 
bound  grew  out  of  a  single  social  movement,  and  it  will 
surely  suffer  the  final  eclipse  that  overtakes  all  such  produc 
tions.  The  movement,  as  it  chanced  in  this  case,  was  of 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE  149 

extraordinary  significance,  and  the  fate  of  the  book  is  there 
fore  indefinitely  postponed,  but  already  it  has  long  been  more 
like  a  historical  document  than  a  living  force. 

Mrs.  Stowe  continued  to  exercise  her  gift  for  drawing 
character,  and  some  of  her  later  stories — such  sketches  of 
New  England  village  life,  for  instance,  as  The  Minister's 
Wooing  (1859)  and  Oldtown  Folks  (1869) — would  in  them 
selves  give  her  a  respectable  place  among  writers  of  fiction. 
But  these  books  are  in  no  sense  romances.  With  Mrs. 
Stowe's  later  work,  indeed,  those  phases  of  romantic  activity 
which  it  has  been  the  purpose  of  the  present  chapter  to  set 
forth,  are  practically  lost  sight  of,  and  the  realistic  novel  of 
the  post-bellum  period  begins  to  appear. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT.— EMERSON, 
THOREAU 

There  has  been  in  American  literature  but  one  instance  of 
anything  like  a  conscious  and  organized  intellectual  "move 
ment."  The  groups  of  writers  we  have  thus  far  considered 
are  groups  made  by  the  historian  of  literature  who,  looking 
back  over  the  field,  tries  to  bring  men  and  events  into  some 
definite  relations.  Writers  have  been  discussed  together,  not 
because  they  consciously  worked  together,  but  because  they 
were  contemporaries  or  because  they  chanced  to  possess 
similar  traits.  But  about  a  decade  before  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  a  few  men  and  women  in  New  England, 
holding  certain  views  of  life  and  morals,  made  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  unite  for  the  defence  and  spread  of  their  views; 
and  though  they  never  effected  any  organization  that  could 
be  called  a  church,  nor  even  established  a  permanent  school 
of  philosophy,  they  did  make  a  strong  impression  upon  the 
intellectual  life  of  their  time,  and  their  theories  had  issue  in  a 
small  but  very  vital  body  of  literature.  The  history,  there 
fore,  of  Transcendentalism — a  ponderous  but  not  unfitting 
name  which  these  thinkers  themselves  imported  from  abroad 
and  which,  though  it  was  often  employed  by  others  in  ridicule, 
they  always  treated  gravely — belongs  peculiarly  to  the  his 
tory  of  American  literature. 

RELIGION  AND  PHILOSOPHY  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 

In  the  theology  of  New  England,  Calvinism  had  for  two 
centuries  held  its  own  almost  unchallenged.  But  the  spirit  of 
revolution  and  free  thought  that,  about  1800,  was  working 

150 


RELIGION   AND    PHILOSOPHY   IN   NEW   ENGLAND  151 

such  changes  in  Europe,  made  itself  felt  also  in  America,  and 
the  sterner  features  of  the  religion  of  the  Puritans  had  to  give 
way  before  it.  Many  found  it  no  longer  possible  to  subscribe 
to  the  old  doctrines,  which  taught,  among  other  things,  that 
human  nature  is  totally  depraved  and  that  only  certain 
"elect"  are  marked  for  salvation.  They  began  to  declare 
more  liberal  views,  and  their  declarations  rapidly  crystallized 
into  what  is  now  familiarly  known  as  Unitarianism.  This 
was  a  form  of  faith  which  practically  ignored  all  revelation 
outside  of  conscience,  holding  that  man  must  look  for  guid 
ance  solely  to  the  moral  nature  within,  believing  it  to  be 
good,  and  so  between  himself  and  the  one  God  work  out  his 
salvation. 

The  new  theology  spread,  if  not  far,  at  least  so  effectually 
that  it  was  soon  established  at  the  Divinity  School  at  Harvard 
and  in  many  of  the  prominent  churches  in  and  about  Boston. 
Its  growth  and  influence  were  largely  due  to  that  great 
vindicator  of  personal  character  as  against  professed  creed, 
Dr.  William  Ellery  Channing  (1780-1842),  who  was  regarded 
through  the  thirty-odd  years  of  his  ministry  at  Boston  as  the 
most  eloquent  pulpit  orator  in  America,  and  whose  works  are 
still  held  in  high  respect.  Other  prominent  advocates  were 
Theodore  Parker  (1810-1860),  who  gave  to  the  cause  his 
youthful  zeal,  and  James  Freeman  Clarke  (1810-1888),  one 
of  the  foremost  of  the  later  Unitarians,  both  in  the  pulpit 
and  in  letters. 

Of  course,  the  old  church  was  not  overthrown.  Congre 
gationalism,  though  of  a  liberalized  type,  still  prevailed  in 
many  parts  of  New  England  as  it  did  elsewhere.  And  in 
Horace  Bushnell  (1802-1876),  who  preached  at  Hartford,  and 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  (1813-1887),  who  preached  at  Brooklyn, 
Congregationalism  had,  through  the  middle  of  the  century, 
exponents  nearly  or  quite  as  distinguished  as  Channing, 
But  though  these  two  published  as  well  as  preached — Beecher 


152  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

even  wrote  a  novel — they  scarcely  concern  us  here.  Neither 
Congregationalism  nor  Unitarianism,  as  such,  produced  any 
thing  in  the  nature  of  enduring  literature,  and  their  progress 
has  been  glanced  at  here  only  because  it  will  assist  to  an 
understanding  of  the  half-religious  and  half-philosophical 
Transcendental  movement,  which,  as  was  said,  does  touch 
literature  closely  enough  to  demand  our  attention. 

Into  the  precise  origin  of  this  movement  we  need  not 
inquire.  Doubtless  the  underlying  philosophical  ideas  are 
older  than  Plato  or  Buddha,  and  were  transmitted  from  the 
far  East.  The  immediate  impulse  came  from  the  philoso 
phers  of  Germany,  through  many  agents,  conspicuously  the 
English  Coleridge  and  Carlyle.  Beginning  as  a  speculative 
philosophy  only,  it  struck  in  New  England  upon  very  ardent 
moralists  and  very  practical-minded  men,  among  whom  had 
already  been  sown  the  seeds  of  liberalism,  and  who,  dissatis 
fied  with  their  old  forms  and  creeds,  caught  up  this  attractive 
philosophy  and  proceeded  at  once  to  erect  it  into  a  kind  of 
gospel  and  guide  of  life.  At  the  base  of  it  lay  what  is  called 
idealism — the  reliance,  as  the  word  implies,  upon  ideas,  or  the 
world  within,  as  the  only  sure  testimony  we  can  have  of 
matter,  or  the  world  without.  Transcendentalism  (as  under 
stood  in  New  England — not  the  Transcendentalism  of  the 
German  Kant)  meant  the  belief  that  within  the  mind  are 
certain  intuitions,  or  knowledge  of  truth  and  right,  that 
transcend,  that  is  to  say,  go  beyond,  are  independent  of,  all 
experience.  Whence  these  intuitions  come  we  do  not  know; 
nor  can  we  logically  prove  their  validity — "truths  which 
pertain  to  the  soul  cannot  be  proved  by  any  external  testi 
mony  whatsoever."  We  can  only  follow,  with  implicit 
trust,  the  "inner  light."  This,  of  course,  is  sheer  individual 
ism,  the  doctrine  of  the  Unitarians  pushed  to  its  extreme, 
making  every  man  his  own  moral  guide  and  sweeping  away  at 
a  blow  all  theological  systems.  It  is  therefore  no  matter  for 


RELIGION   AND    PHILOSOPHY   IN   NEW   ENGLAND  153 

surprise  that  many  men,  among  them  notably  Theodore 
Parker,  were  carried  partly  or  completely  outside  of  the 
Unitarian  church. 

The  movement,  however,  was  not  of  a  nature  to  attract 
the  masses.  It  differed  from  "The  Great  Awakening,"  that 
religious  revival  of  a  century  earlier,*  in  being  less  sudden, 
less  violent,  and  in  every  way  more  restricted.  It  differed 
radically,  too,  from  the  temperance  and  abolition  movements 
of  its  own  time,  both  of  which  owed  much  to  it,  in  that  these, 
being  more  definite  "causes,"  could  be  fought  out  on  the 
platform  or  by  the  people  at  the  polls.  Transcendentalism 
was  a  cult  of  the  cultured,  and  the  other  classes  scarcely 
knew  of  its  existence.  Yet,  though  stripped  of  emotional 
and  popular  elements,  it  was  none  the  less  a  wave  of  senti 
ment  and  reform — a  genuine  quickening  of  spiritual  life. 
It  had  a  large  element  of  religion  in  it.  Nothing  could 
lightly  shake  the  moral  earnestness  of  the  New  Englanders, 
deepened  as  it  was  by  more  than  two  centuries  of  perse 
cutions,  hardships,  and  wars.  The  Unitarianism  that  came 
to  divide  the  old  church  was  altogether  reverent  and  serious. 
And  when  new  doctrines  came  to  burst  even  the  wide  bonds 
of  Unitarianism,  there  was  still  never  any  thought  of  giving 
up  the  fundamental  principles  of  morality  and  religion. 
Men  concerned  themselves  no  longer  about  special  schemes 
of  salvation.  But  they  were  all  the  more  deeply  concerned 
about  right  living  and  thinking;  and  the  common  definition  of 
Transcendentalism  as  a  doctrine  of  "plain  living  and  high 
thinking,"  loose  as  it  is,  is  by  no  means  bad. 

Some  definite  facts  may  serve  to  set  the  movement  in  a 
clearer  light. 

Some  time  in  1836  a  little  knot  of  men  and  women  began 
to  meet  in  Boston,  drawn  together  by  a  common  interest 
in  matters  that  affected  religion,  and  especially  the  condition 

*  See  page  30. 


154  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

of  the  Unitarian  Church.  This  knot,  though  never  definitely 
organized,  came  to  be  known  in  time  as  the  Transcendental 
Club.  Among  those  who  took  part  in  its  meetings  were 
Emerson,  Alcott,  Thoreau,  the  Ripleys,  the  Channings,  Theo 
dore  Parker,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  George  Bancroft,  Haw 
thorne,  Cranch,  Jones  Very,  Margaret  Fuller,  Miss  Elizabeth 
and  Miss  Sophia  Peabody.  In  1840  The  Dial,  a  quarterly 
magazine,  was  established  as  the  organ  of  the  movement. 
For  the  first  number  Emerson  wrote  the  introductory  words, 
remarking  upon  what  he  called  "the  progress  of  a  revolution" 
in  the  society  of  New  England,  and  dedicating  the  magazine 
to  all  who  were  "united  in  a  common  love  of  truth  and  love 
of  its  work,"  who  had  "given  in  their  several  adherence  to  a 
new  hope,"  and  who  had  "signified  a  greater  trust  in  the 
nature  and  resources  of  man  than  the  laws  or  the  popular 
opinions  would  well  allow."  The  editorship  was  held  by 
Margaret  Fuller  for  two  years  and  then  passed  to  Emerson 
for  two  years  more,  when  the  paper  died  for  lack  of  support. 
The  numbers  were  freely  given  away  or  destroyed,  so  that 
today  a  complete  file  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  obtain.  It 
contained  much  literature  of  high  quality,  notably  Emerson's 
contributions,  and  also  a  great  deal  of  mystical  jargon. 

Of  the  more  practical  outcomes  of  this  new-world  attempt 
to  bring  philosophy  down  from  the  heavens  to  the  earth,  the 
most  famous  was  the  Brook  Farm  experiment.  In  1840 
George  Ripley,  later  known  as  a  literary  editor  and  critic, 
resigned  from  the  ministry  and  purchased  a  farm  at  West 
Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  persuading  a  number  of  others  to 
co-operate  with  him  in  establishing  there  an  agricultural 
association.  Their  object  was  to  see  whether  the  brain  and 
the  hand  could  not  be  made  to  work  advantageously  together; 
whether  the  same  individual  might  not  be  both  thinker  and 
worker,  and  thus  find  for  himself  a  simpler,  freer,  and  happier 
life.  They  proposed  also  to  conduct  for  the  younger  mem- 


RELIGION  AND  PHILOSOPHY  IN  NEW  ENGLAND     155 

bers  a  school  in  accordance  with  these  Arcadian  principles. 
The  Transcendental  Club  had  no  direct  part  in  Brook  Farm; 
most  of  the  members  of  the  club,  indeed,' were  rather  opposed 
to  it.  But  Bipley  and  his  dozen  or  more  associates  (Haw 
thorne,  we  have  seen,  was  one,  and  Charles  A.  Dana,  later 
of  the  New  York  Sun,  another)  moved  to  the  farm  in  the 
spring  of  1841  and  set  to  work  in  high  spirits.  For  several 
years  the  enterprise  was  conducted  with  some  measure  of 
success.  Alcott,  Emerson,  Margaret  Fuller,  W.  H.  Channing, 
Cranch,  Horace  Greeley,  were  all  occasional  visitors,  inter 
ested  arid  sometimes  sympathetic ;  Higginson  and  Lowell  also 
passed  that  way;  George  William  Curtis  was  there  as  a 
student.  But  the  experiment  changed  form,  and  ended, 
after  a  few  more  years,  in  failure. 

Doubtless  there  were  at  this  period,  when  reform  was  "in 
the  air,"  many  reformers  who  expected  too  much  of  human 
nature.  They  fancied  that  wonderful  revolutions  could  be 
brought  about  in  a  day,  as  if  a  man  could,  by  taking  thought, 
add  a  cubit  to  his  stature.  And  many  of  the  methods  pro 
posed  were  extravagant  in  the  extreme.  Manual  labor  was 
all  very  well;  even  a  vegetarian  diet  might  be  tolerated;  but 
wherein  lay  the  peculiar  virtue  of  white  garments,  wThich 
Alcott  insisted  upon  wearing?  "Some,"  says  Lowrell,  in  his 
essay  on  Thoreau,  "had  assurance  of  instant  millenium  so 
soon  as  hooks  and  eyes  should  be  substituted  for  buttons." 
But  in  spite  of  mistakes  and  extravagances,  and  a  host  of 
beliefs  and  incidents  that  the  pen  of  a  Lowell  could  readily 
turn  to  ridicule,  there  was  in  Transcendentalism  so  much 
faith  and  nobility  and  unselfish  endeavor,  and  New  England 
life  was  so  much  a  gainer  from  it,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
regard  it  uncharitably. 

The  reformers  spent  their  energies  in  various  ways,  as 
Parker  in  the  pulpit,  Ripley  on  the  farm,  Greeley  and  Dana 
through  the  press;  but  for  the  most  part  their  individual  influ- 


156  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

ences  have  long  since  been  lost  in  the  great  current  of  human 
endeavor.  A  few  worked  in  letters  to  scarcely  more  enduring 
fame.  There  was  Amos  Bronson  Alcott  (1799-1888),  the  re 
puted  head  of  the  movement,  the  originality  of  whose 
methods  of  teaching  earned  for  him  the  title  of  "the  American 
Pestalozzi,"  and  who  contributed  to  The  Dial  "Orphic 
Sayings"  of  oracular  sound  and  unfathomable  meaning. 
There  was  the  ill-fated  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli  (1810-1850), 
friend  of  Emerson  and  editor  of  The  Dial,,  perhaps  the  one 
American  woman  of  her  day  fitted  by  intellect  and  training 
to  associate  with  the  men  of  her  set  upon  equal  terms,  but 
who  lost  her  life  in  a  ship-wreck  just  when  her  powers,  chiefly 
critical,  were  fully  ripened.  There  were  poets,  too — William 
Ellery  Channing,  the  younger  (1818-1901),  of  Concord,  the 
friend  and  elegiast  of  Thoreau,  and  Christopher  Pearse 
Cranch  (1813-1892),  a  landscape  painter  of  Cambridge, 
translator  of  Vergil's  Aeneid  (1872),  and  author  of  the  familiar 
lines : — 

"Thought  is  deeper  than  all  speech, 
Feeling  deeper  than  all  thought."' 

Both  of  these  were  contributors  to  The  Dial.  Another  poet, 
somewhat  further  removed  from  the  Concord  circle,  was 
Jones  Very,  of  Salem  (1813-1880),  a  strange  religious  recluse 
and  mystic,  who  wrote  many  poems  and  sonnets  of  a  merit 
quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  slender  fame.  But  these 
names  all  pale  before  the  name  of  him  in  whom  for  us  Trans 
cendentalism  virtually  has  its  beginning  and  end,  and  mainly 
because  of  whom  this  history  has  been  revived. 

RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON,  1803-1882 

Hawthorne  inscribed  on  the  walls  of  his  tower-study  at  the 
Wayside,  "There  is  no  joy  but  calm,"  and  the  motto  would 
have  suited  well  most  of  that  coterie  of  men  whose  dreams 
were  nurtured  by  the  quiet  Concord — the  old  Grass-ground  or 


EMERSON  157 

Meadow  River — and  in  the  Massachusetts  town  whose 
name  means  peace.  It  would  have  suited  none  better  than 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  who,  placid  in  temperament  even 
beyond  the  others,  lived  always  the  simple  life  of  the  phil 
osopher  that  he  was.  He  was  born  at  Boston,  May  25,  1803. 
The  blood  of  seven  generations  of  clergymen  ran  in  his  veins. 
One  of  those  clergymen,  Peter  Bulkeley,  founded  and  named 
the  town  of  Concord;  another,  William  Emerson,  was  the 
builder  of  the  Old  Manse,  and  a  patriot  of  the  Revolution 
who  preached  to  the  minute-men.  All  were  in  their  way 
heroic  men.  One  prayed  every  night  that  no  descendant 
of  his  might  ever  be  rich;  one  gave  away  his  wife's  only  pair 
of  shoes  to  a  woman  who  appeared  at  the  door  barefoot  on  a 
frosty  morning. 

Ralph  Waldo  himself  was  reared  hardily.     His  father 

died  when  he  was  but  eight  years  old,  and  his  mother  was 

forced  to  take  in  boarders.     An  aunt  was  once 

Youth. 

overheard  consoling  the  children  for  want  of  food 
with  "stories  of  heroic  endurance."  He  and  his  brother  had 
but  one  overcoat  between  them,  and — hard  lot  for  a  New 
England  boy — he  never  had  a  sled.  Later  in  life  he  wrote 
glowingly  of  "the  Angels  of  Toil  and  Want,"  and  extolled 
"the  iron  band  of  poverty,  the  hoop  that  holds  men  staunch." 
At  school  he  was  quiet  and  studious,  taking  little  interest 
in  sports  and  making  but  moderate  progress  in  his  studies. 
It  has  been  said  of  him  that  "he  never  had  any  talent  for 
anything — nothing  but  pure  genius;"  and  the  genius  was 
certainly  slow  to  manifest  itself.  The  hopes  of  the  family 
centred  in  a  younger  and  more  brilliant  brother,  whose  mind 
and  body,  however,  broke  early  under  their  severer  strain. 

He  entered  Harvard,  mostly  working  his  way,  and  taking 
his  degree  in  1821.  For  the  next  few  years  he  taught,  rather 
indifferently.  One  of  his  pupils  was  young  Dana,  and 
Emerson  wrote  afterwards  of  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast: 


158  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

"Have  you  seen  young  Dana's  book?     Good  as  Robinson 

Crusoe,  and  all  true.     He  was  my  scholar  once,  but  he  never 

learned  this  of  me,  more's  the  pity."      At  this 

At  School* 

stage  Emerson  was  ambitious  to  become  a  pulpit 
orator,  but  he  was  growing  more  and  more  dissatisfied  with 
himself,  feeling  that  his  abilities  were  in  no  direction  adequate 
to  his  ambitions.  The  reasoning  faculty  seemed  to  be  denied 
him,  and  its  place  was  but  ill  supplied  by  imagination  and  a 
keen  relish  for  poetry.  He  called  himself  an  intellectual 
saunterer,  "sinfully  strolling  from  book  to  book,  from  care 
to  idleness."  Fortunately,  he  was  a  stroller,  too,  in  another 
sense;  he  more  than  once  declared  that  nothing  yielded  him 
so  much  pleasure  as  to  steal  away  over  the  meadows  and 
through  the  bushes,  "picking  blueberries  and  other  trash  of 
the  woods,  far  from  fame  behind  the  birch  trees."  And  he 
adds — a  strange  commentary  upon  the  attitude  of  his  fellows 
toward  nature — :  "I  do  not  think  I  know  a  creature  who  has 
the  same  humor,  or  would  think  it  respectable."  He  had  to 
"slink"  away.  One  of  his  earliest  poems,  the  familiar 
"Good-bye,  proud  world!  I'm  going  home,"  was  written 
at  the  time  when,  toward  the  end  of  his  school-teaching,  he 
went  with  his  mother  to  her  new  home  in  the  wooded  seclu 
sion  of  Canterbury  Lane,  where  for  a  time  he  sought  to  put 
himself  "on  a  footing  of  old  acquaintance  with  Nature,  as  a 
poet  should." 

The  teaching  paved  the  way  to  a  course  in  Divinity,  which 
followed.    After  several  interruptions  caused  by  a  weak  chest, 

which  drove  him  once  to  South  Carolina  and 
Church.  Florida,  Emerson  was  licensed  to  preach,  and  in 

1829  was  ordained  minister  of  the  Second  Church 
of  Boston,  the  old  North  Church  of  Cotton  Mather.  In  the 
same  year  he  married,  but  his  wife  died  within  eighteen 
months.  His  relations  with  the  people  of  his  church  were 
most  cordial  and  his  future  looked  bright,  if  not  exactly 


EMERSON  159 

brilliant.  But  certain  conscientious  scruples,  which  had  all 
along  troubled  him,  would  not  let  him  rest.  Even  the  slight 
formalism  of  his  church,  already  liberalized  beyond  Cotton 
Mather's  most  uneasy  dreams,  he  found  too  great.  Forms 
seemed  to  stand  between  him  and  pure  religion.  To  admin 
ister  the  Lord's  Supper  while  regarding  it  as  an  obsolete  rite, 
perhaps  worse  than  useless,  seemed,  to  one  of  his  sincere 
mind,  a  kind  of  sacrilege.  In  1832  he  withdrew  from  his 
charge.  His  friends  feared  that  he  was  mentally  deranged. 
He  was  following  an  inner  light  that  had  not  yet  shone  clearly 
enough  for  them  to  see.  Meanwhile,  he  went  to  Europe,  not 
for  art  or  scenery,  but  to  meet  men, — Coleridge,  Landor, 
Wordsworth,  above  all  Carlyle,  another  man  maturing  slowly 
and  still  misunderstood  and  almost  unknown.  He  spent  an 
evening  of  quiet  thought  with  Carlyle  at  his  lonely  Craigen- 
puttock  home,  and  the  next  morning  Carlyle  watched  him 
mount  the  hill  and  "vanish  like  an  angel."  Two  obscure  men 
of  genius  had  met  and  recognized  each  other.  Several  years 
later  Emerson  introduced  Carlyle's  original  and  startling 
Sartor  Resartus,  to  American  readers  while  English  readers 
were  still  looking  askance.  The  two  never  afterward  lost 
touch,  and  their  lifelong  correspondence  makes  a  book  of 
rare  interest. 

The  year  1835  found  Emerson  living  with  his  mother  in 

the  Old  Manse  at  Concord,  meditating  and  writing,  rather 

aimlessly,  as  Hawthorne  was  doing  at  Salem.     He 

At  Concord.  .  .  „   ,  . 

soon  married  again,  and  buying  a  house  ot  his 
own,  settled  in  Concord  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  At  the 
second  centennial  anniversary  of  the  town,  in  1835,  he  deliv 
ered  an  address,  and  on  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of 
Lexington,  April  19,  1836,  at  the  completion  of  the  Battle 
Monument,  was  sung  his  now  famous  hymn : — 

"By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 
Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 


160  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL    MOVEMENT 

Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood 

And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world."         , 

His  mornings  were  spent  in  the  study,  his  afternoons  in  walk 
ing  or  gardening.  He  did  some  lecturing  at  Boston  and  else 
where.  For  the  rest,  his  half  idyllic  life  suited  him,  and  he 
indulged  his  rural  fancy  by  buying  several  tracts  of  woodland 
on  the  shores  of  Wai  den  Pond. 

In  the  year  and  the  month  in  which  the  Transcendental 
Club  came  into  being,  September,  1836,  Emerson  published 
his  first  book,  the  slow  growth  of  three  years  or  more.  Nature, 
he  entitled  it,  showing  already  his  liking  for  brief  titles,  which 
allow  the  widest  latitude  of  treatment.  It  was  but  a  small 
book,  as  space-measurements  go— eight  short  chapters,  that 
would  have  made  one  good  lecture  in  all.  But  almost  every 
sentence  had  the  weight  of  a  lecture.  "  Nature  always  wears 
the  colors  of  the  spirit."  "The  eye  is  the  best  of  artists." 
" Beauty  is  the  mark  God  sets  upon  virtue."  "  Every  natural 
action  is  graceful."  "  A  work  of  art  is  an  abstract  or  epitome 
of  the  world."  "All  things  are  moral."  " A  man  is  a  god  in 
ruins."  "  It  is  a  sufficient  account  of  that  appearance  we  call 
the  world  that  God  will  [i.  e.,  wills  to]  reach  a  human  mind, 
and  so  makes  it  the  receiver  of  a  certain  number  of  congruent 
sensations,  which  we  call  sun  and  moon,  man  and  woman, 
house  and  trade."  "Build,  therefore,  your  own  world." 
It  is  readily  seen  that  this  was  a  declaration  of  the  idealistic 
philosophy,  or  rather  faith.  External  nature  is  conceived  of 
as  none  other  than  God  apparent,  God  making  himself  mani 
fest.  There  is  little  philosophical  reasoning,  but  mainly 
broad,  frank,  confident  statement.  Whoever  shall  try  to 
analyze  the  book  for  logical  coherence  of  thought  will  be 
sadly  puzzled.  "I  cannot  argue,"  Emerson  would  say, 
"I  only  know."  He  distrusted  reasoning,  and  lived  and 
thought  by  his  creed,  "Revere  your  intuitions."  And  this, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  the  substance  of  Transcendentalism. 


EMERSON  161 

Nature,  which  joined  to  its  mysticism  genuine  insight,  was 
the  foremost  document  of  the  new  movement,  and  though 
the  little  tract  did  not  circulate  widely,  it  went  deep.  Those 
who  could  not  sympathize  with  its  philosophy  could  at  least 
feel  its  poetic  beauty:— 

"I  see  the  spectacle  of  morning  from  the  hilltop  over  against  my 
house  from  daybreak  to  sunrise,  with  emotions  which  an  angel  might 
share.  The  long,  slender  bars  of  cloud  float  like  fishes  in  the  sea  of 
crimson  light.  From  the  earth,  as  a  shore,  I  look  out  into  the  silent 
sea.  I  seem  to  partake  its  rapid  transformations;  the  active  enchant 
ment  reaches  my  dust,  and  I  dilate  and  conspire  with  the  morning  wind. 
How  does  Nature  deify  us  with  a  few  and  cheap  elements!  Give  me 
health  and  a  day,  and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of  emperors  ridiculous. 
The  dawn  is  my  Assyria;  the  sunset  and  moonrise  my  Paphos,  and 
unimaginable  realms  of  faerie;  broad  noon  shall  be  my  England  of  the 
senses  and  the  understanding;  the  night  shall  be  my  Germany  of  mystic 
philosophy  and  dreams." 

The  next  year,  1837,  Emerson  delivered  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society,  at  Cambridge,  his  address  on  The 
A  Lecturer  American  Scholar — "an  event,"  Lowell  declared 
in  his  essay  on  Thoreau,  "without  any  former 
parallel  in  our  literary  annals."  To  this  high  praise  of 
Lowell's  may  be  added  the  testimony  of  Holmes,  who  called 
the  address  "our  intellectual  Declaration  of  Independence." 
Certainly,  one  who  would  know  Emerson  at  his  best  can  do  no 
better  than  turn  to  this  second  great  confession  of  his  faith 
and  read  it  through.  Even  extracts  show  its  dominant  note 
to  be  inspiring  individuality : — 

"Our  day  of  dependence,  our  long  apprenticeship  to  the  learning 
of  other  lands,  draws  to  a  close.  The  millions  that  around  us  are 
rushing  into  life,  cannot  always  be  fed  on  the  sere  remains  of  foreign 
harvests.  Events,  actions  arise,  that  must  be  sung,  that  will  sing 
themselves.  Who  can  doubt  that  poetry  will  revive  and  lead  in  a  new 
age,  as  the  star  in  the  constellation  Harp,  which  now  flames  in  our 
zenith,  astronomers  announce,  shall  one  day  be  the  pole-star  for  a 
thousand  years?  .  .  . 


162  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

"The  old  fable  concerns  a  doctrine  ever  new  and  sublime;  that 
there  is  One  Man,  present  to  all  particular  men  only  partially,  or  through 
one  faculty;  and  that  you  must  take  the  whole  society  to  find  the  whole 
man.  Man  is  riot  a  farmer,  or  a  professor,  or  an  engineer,  but  he  is 
all.  Man  is  priest,  and  scholar,  and  statesman,  and  producer,  and 
soldier.  In  the  divided  or  social  state  these  functions  are  parcelled 
out  to  individuals,  each  of  whom  aims  to  do  his  stint  of  the  joint 
work,  whilst  each  other  performs  his.  ...  In  this  distribution 
of  functions  the  scholar  is  the  delegated  intellect.  In  the  right  state 
he  is  Man  Thinking.  In  the  degenerate  state,  when  the  victim  of 
society,  he  tends  to  become  a  mere  thinker,  or  still  worse,  the  parrot 
of  other  men's  thinking. 

"Books  are  the  best  of  things,  well  used;  abused,  among  the  worst. 
What  is  the  right  use?  What  is  the  one  end  which  all  means  go  to 
effect?  They  are  for  nothing  but  to  inspire.  I  had  better  never  see 
a  book  than  to  be  warped  by  its  attraction  clean  out  of  my  own  orbit, 
and  made  a  satellite  instead  of  a  system.  The  one  thing  in  the  world, 
of  value,  is  the  active  soul.  ...  In  its  essence  it  is  progressive. 
The  book,  the  college,  the  school  of  art,  the  institution  of  any  kind,  stop 
with  some  past  utterance  of  genius.  This  is  good,  say  they, — let  us 
hold  by  this.  They  pin  me  down.  They  look  backward  and  not 
forward.  But  genius  looks  forward:  the  eyes  of  man  are  set  in  his  fore 
head,  not  in  his  hindhead:  man  hopes:  genius  creates.  .  .  .  Man 
Thinking  must  not  be  subdued  by  his  instruments.  Books  are  for  the 
scholar's  idle  times.  When  he  can  read  God  directly,  the  hour  is  too 
precious  to  be  wasted  in  other  men's  transcripts  of  their  readings. 

"In  self-trust  all  the  virtues  are  comprehended.  Free  should  the 
scholar  be, — free  and  brave.  .  .  .  The  man  has  never  lived  that 
can  feed  us  ever.  The  human  mind  cannot  be  enshrined  in  a  person 
who  shall  set  a  barrier  on  any  side  to  this  unbounded,  unboundable 
empire.  It  is  one  central  fire,  which,  flaming  now  out  of  the  lips  of 
JStna,  lightens  the  Capes  of  Sicily,  and  now  out  of  the  throat  of  Vesu 
vius,  illuminates  the  towers  and  vineyards  of  Naples.  It  is  one  light 
which  beams  out  of  a  thousand  stars.  It  is  one  soul  which  animates 
all  men." 

An  address,  delivered  the  next  year  before  the  Divinity 
class  at  Cambridge,  helped  to  fix  the  impression  that  a  new 
leader  had  arisen,  though  even  then  few  realized  what  a 
revolution  he  was  leading.  Emerson's  manner  was  ST»  quiet, 


EMERSON  163 

his  ideals  were  so  lofty,  and  his  faith  was  so  serene,  that  he 
won  his  way  almost  unopposed.  Holmes  said  that  he  was 
"an  iconoclast  without  a  hammer,  who  took  down  our  idols 
from  their  pedestals  so  tenderly  that  it  seemed  like  an  act  of 
worship."  His  first  volume  of  Essays  was  published  in  1841 ; 
and  today  there  are  few  readers  who  do  not  know  something 
of  "History,"  "Self -Reliance,"  "Compensation,"  "Hero 
ism,"  or  "The  Over-Soul."  The  second  series,  of  a  more 
practical,  less  seer-like  nature— " Character,"  "Manners," 
"  Gifts,"  "  Politics,"— followed  in  1844.  This  was  the  period 
of  his  editorship  of  The  Dial  Then  came  Poems,  in  1847; 
Representative  Men  (lectures  delivered  in  1845,  a  kind  of 
complement  to  Carlyle's  Heroes),  in  1850;  English  Traits, 
1856;  The  Conduct  of  Life,  1860;  May-Day  and  Other  Pieces 
(poems),  1867;  Society  and  Solitude,  1870.  Meanwhile,  he 
carried  on  his  lecturing  in  the  East,  went  to  England  and  lec 
tured  in  1847,  and  between  1850  and  1870,  during  the  flour 
ishing  period  of  the  "Lyceum"  or  Lecture  Bureau  system, 
made  regular  winter  tours  as  far  west  as  the  Mississippi.  In 
deed,  his  early  Boston  lectures  marked  almost  the  beginning 
of  that  system  which  grew  in  this  country  to  such  great  pro 
portions,  carrying  into  nearly  every  village  of  the  North  the 
best  products  of  the  country's  culture  through  speakers  of 
such  eminent  worth  as  Emerson,  Everett,  Phillips,  Gough, 
Beecher,  Holmes,  Agassiz,  Taylor,  and  Curtis. 

By   1870   Emerson's   work  was   nearly   done.     He   was 
accepted  everywhere  as  one  of  those  rare  and  essentially  great 
men  who,  by  simply  being  themselves  and  utter 
ing  what  they  feel,  show  what  a  gulf  of  superiority 
is  fixed  between  them  and  all  who  strive  and  climb.     He  was 
something  more  than  lecturer,  or  essayist,  or  poet;  he  was  the 
"Sage  of  Concord,"  whom  all  delighted  to  honor.     When  his 
house  burned,  in  1872,  his  friends  sent  him  off  to  Europe 
and  Egypt  and  rebuilt  the  house.     People  would  still  insist 


164  THE    TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

upon  hearing  him  speak,  though  he  but  repeated  old  speeches. 
His  mind  was  clear,  but  his  memory  and  vitality  were  both 
failing.  "My  memory  hides  itself,"  he  would  say.  He 
read  as  late  as  1881  before  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy. 
He  attended  Longfellow's  funeral  in  March,  1882,  but,  it  is 
said,  could  not  recall  Longfellow's  name.  His  own  death 
came  a  month  later;  and  he  was  buried  near  Hawthorne  and 
Thoreau  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  on  the  pine  ridge 
where  a  piece  of  unhewn  granite  marks  his  grave. 

It  has  been  said  that  Emerson  spent  his  life  in  teaching 

one  thing — a  statement,  indeed,  that  will  hold  of  most  great 

teachers,  but  of  none  more  literally.    In  Emerson's 

Philosophy.  .  J 

doctrine  of  the  transcendent  value  of  the  inner  rev 
elation  is  to  be  found  the  key  to  his  life  and  thought.  It 
explains,  for  example  his  attitude  toward  science  and 
nature.  Nature  without  is  as  nature  within,  and,  in  his 
conception,  is  but  an  infinite  variation  of  the  lesson  of  beauty 
and  order  that  the  Great  Spirit  will  have  us  learn.  He  cared 
nothing  for  details.  Details,  he  said,  are  melancholy.  The 
large  significance  is  the  main  thing.  And  the  smallest  life 
includes  all:  understand  one,  you  understand  all.  "Who 
telleth  one  of  my  meanings,"  says  the  Sphinx,  "is  master  of  all 
I  am."  Thus  all  things  in  life  are  unified,  and  everything, 
down  to  the  humblest  organism  and  the  humblest  occupation, 
is  glorified.  Hence,  too,  the  doctrine  of  self-reliance,  which 
is  only  intuitionalism  and  individualism  in  other  words.  This 
doctrine  he  carried  so  far  that  he  distrusted  all  concerted 
efforts  for  the  betterment  of  society.  He  rejected  Ripley's 
invitation  to  join  in  the  Brook  Farm  experiment.  "At 
the  name  of  a  society  all  my  repulsions  play,  all  my  quills  rise 
and  sharpen."  What  was  the  need  of  men  standing  together 
when  they  could  stand  alone?  He  was  stirring  up  a  nation's 
moral  heroism  by  giving  to  each  man  the  courage  of  his 
opinion.  . 


EMERSON  165 

We  talk  of  disciples  of  this  man  or  that,  but  "a  disciple  of 
Emerson"  would  be  a  contradiction  of  terms.  For  Emerson's 
very  teaching  frees  the  pupil  from  allegiance.  He  never  said, 
"Follow  me,"  but,  in  effect,  "Follow  the  divinity  within 
yourself,  rely  on  your  part  in  the  Over-Soul.  Never  mind 
dogmas  or  other  men's  opinions;  never  mind  appearances; 
never  mind  the  conclusions  of  logic; — simply  do  what  you  feel 
to  be  right.  If  you  will  accept  the  place  that  Providence  has 
given  you,  living  your  own  life  without  envy  or  self-effacing 
imitation,  all  will  be  well."  A  noble  philosophy  indeed  for 
the  inherently  noble,  though  one  is  often  made  to  feel  that 
its  serene  assurance  does  not  take  a  sufficient  account  of  sin 
and  the  weakness  of  unaided  human  nature. 

The  style  in  which  Emerson  wrote  was  of  a  piece  with  his 
substance.  It  is  best  described  as  oracular.  Its  want  of 
m  st  le  sequence,  which  puts  it  in  strong  contrast,  for 
example,  to  a  style  like  De  Quincey's  or  New 
man's,  arises  naturally,  since  Emerson  did  not  arrive  at  truth 
by  subtle  reasoning  but  simply  gave  forth  the  ideas  as  they 
came  to  him,  in  the  tersest  form.  It  is  almost  literally  true 
that  some  of  his  essays  can  be  read  backward  as  well  as  for 
ward.  The  relation  between  two  sentences  may  sometimes 
be  discovered  by  supplying  the  right  connective,  but  more 
often  there  is  no  close  relation.  If  a  paragraph  or  sentence 
should  fall  out  of  one  of  his  books,  no  one  could  tell  where  to 
replace  it.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  selecting  a  subject  for  a 
lecture  and  then  throwing  together  from  his  note  books  all 
the  scraps  he  could  find  that  bore  on  the  subject.  Thus  the 
relation  of  parts  is  not  like  that  of  the  links  of  a  chain,  but 
more  like  that  of  the  spokes  of  a  wheel,  which  radiate  from  a 
central  hub.  Yet  through  all  there  is  such  a  singleness  of 
manner  and  personality  that  we  are  scarcely  aware,  as  in  so 
many  writers  of  detached  thoughts,  of  any  lack  of  construc- 
tiveness.  The  sentences  are  short  and  well  turned,  the 


166  THE    TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

words  direct,  strong,  and  often  homely,  the  figures  original 
and  quaint,  with  a  play  of  humor  always  just  beneath  the 
surface.  He  is  the  most  quotable  writer  since  Bacon.  His 
epigrams  are  a  constant  stimulus,  his  aphorisms  a  constant 
satisfaction.  He  takes  particular  delight  in  the  paradoxical, 
often  finding  the  greater  truth  in  inversion.  "Books  are  for 
the  scholar's  idle  times."  "The  highest  price  you  can  pay  for 
a  thing  is  to  ask  it."  "The  borrower  runs  in  his  own  debt." 
"Our  strength  grows  out  of  our  weakness."  "We  are  wiser 
than  we  know."  This  is  Poor  Richard  spiritualized  at  last. 

We  have  said  too  little  of  Emerson's  poetry.  In  essence  a 
poet,  and  in  methods  a  seer,  he  should  have  spoken  in  the 
language  of  seers.  And  at  times  he  did  so  speak, 
with  rare  effect.  He  was  happier  than  Carlyle  in 
having  some  gift  of  song.  But  the  gift  was  partial  only.  He 
had  a  good  ear  for  melody  but  not  for  the  higher  harmonies  of 
verse.  In  his  poetry  lame  lines  and  imperfect  rhymes  are 
frequent.  Perhaps  he  followed  too  implicitly  his  own  theory 
that  truth,  uttered  under  conviction,  would  find  its  own  per 
fect  form.  He  fell  most  naturally  into  the  simplest  of  metres, 
the  four-foot  couplet,  and  some  of  his  best  thoughts  found 
their  final  expression  in  this  form. 

There  are  two  notable  things  in  Emerson's  poetry, — the 
half-mystical  philosophy  of  which  he  oftentimes  made  it  the 
voice,  and  the  love  of  nature  which  we  have  seen  to  be  so  inti 
mate  a  part  of  the  man.  Among  the  poems  embodying  the 
former  quality,  the  best  are  The  Sphinx,  The  Problem,  Uriel, 
Alphonzo  of  Castile,  Merlin,  Saadi,  Brahma.  But  Philosophy 
rarely  makes  so  good  poetry  as  do  simple  perception  of  beauty 
and  the  emotions  which  beauty  stirs.  Emerson  as  a  philoso 
pher-poet  must  fall  below  Lucretius  or  even  below  old  Omar 
Khayyam,  but  Emerson  as  a  poet  of  nature  has  not  many 
superiors.  Take  some  of  his  most  ragged  lines — the  song  of 
the  pine  in  Woodnotes: — 


EMERSON  167 

"Heed  the  old  oracles, 

Ponder  my  spells; 
Song  wakes  in  my  pinnacles 

When  the  wind  swells. 
Soundeth  the  prophetic  wind, 
The  shadows  shake  on  the  rock  behind, 
And  the  countless  leaves  of  the  pine  are  strings 
Tuned  to  the  lay  the  wood-god  sings. 

Harken!     Harken! 

If  thou  wouldst  know  the  mystic  song 
Chanted  when  the  sphere  was  young." 

This  is  pure  lyric  rapture,  uncontainable  melody,  born  of  a 
heart  that  beats  in  tune  with  the  heart  of  mother  Earth.  And 
there  is  much  more  as  good,  or  better,  in  the  joyful  prelud- 
ings  of  May -Day,  or  the  proud  boasts  of  Monadnoc,  "moun 
tain  strong"  and  "grand  affirmer  of  the  present  tense," 
scorner  of  the  little  men  who  daily  climb  his  side,  yet  patient 
waiter  for  the  poet  who  in  large  thoughts  shall  "string  him 
like  a  bead."  Read  also  Each  and  All,  Rhodora,  The  Humble- 
Bee,  The  Snow-Storm,  Days,  The  Titmouse,  Two  Rivers.  The 
poem  of  The  Humble-Bee  seems  almost  to  shine,  so  saturated 
is  it  with  the  heat  and  light  of  summer.  But  even  in  these 
poems  the  philosopher  is  rarely  out  of  sight.  Behind  the 
phenomena  of  nature  are  always  the  deep  meanings  meant  to 
be  revealed, — "always,"  says  Mr.  Stedman,  "the  idea  of  Soul, 
central  and  pervading,  of  which  Nature's  forms  are  but  the 
created  symbols." 

There  is  one  poem,  the  Threnody,  that  is  almost  too  sacred 
to  be  handled  critically,  since  grief  has  its  own  rhythm,  and 
broken  utterance  obeys  a  higher  law  than  art's.  Emerson's 
boy  Waldo, — 

"The  hyacinthine  boy,  for  whom 
Morn  well  might  break  and  April  bloom," — 

died  at  the  age  of  five.     That  memory  at  least  never  left  the 
man,  who  almost  the  last  thing  before  he  died,  forty  years,, 


168  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

afterward,  said,  "Oh,  that  beautiful  boy!"  The  Threnody 
croons  through  the  first  stages  of  sorrow,  the  sense  of  mere 
loss  and  aching  memories, — 

"The  painted  sled  stands  where  it  stood, 
The  kennel  by  the  corded  wood;" 

bursts  suddenly  into  passionate  protest  against  Nature ;  grows 
calm  again  with  consolation;  and  then  rises  to  the  highest  note 
of  all — the  seer-like  vision  and  the  deep  Heart's  utterance : — 

"  When  frail  Nature  can  no  more, 
Then  the  Spirit  strikes  the  hour: 
My  servant  Death,  with  solving  rite, 
Pours  finite  into  infinite. 
Wilt  thou  freeze  love's  tidal  flow, 
Whose  streams  through  nature  circling  go? 
Nail  the  wild  star  to  its  track 
On  the  half -climbed  zodiac? 
Light  is  light  which  radiates, 
Blood  is  blood  which  circulates, 
Life  is  life  which  generates, 
And  many  seeming  life  is  one, — 
WTilt  thou  transfix  and  make  it  none?" 

Then  comes  the  confident  close,  voicing  the  verdict  of  the 
faith  of  centuries : — 

"What  is  excellent 
As  God  lives,  is  permanent; 
Hearts  are  dust,  hearts'  loves  remain; 
Heart's  love  will  meet  thee  again." 

It  is  doubtful  if  there  be  a  more  exalted  strain  than  this  in 
American  poetry. 

There  have  been  several  attempts  of  late  to  revalue  Emer 
son  and  his  work,  and  the  tendency  is  to  abate  much  of  the 
former  high  estimate.  It  is  a  critical  tendency,  very  natural 
in  a  day  when  the  philosophy  of  experience  has  the  vogue. 
But  Emerson's  books  continue  to  sell,  and  there  is  little 
reason  to  doubt  that  people  are  reading  them  with  ever  fresh 


EMERSON  169 

delight  and  inspiration.  By  their  unflinching  optimism  they 
keep  a  strong  hold.  Emerson  was  a  sage,  but  a  sage  for 

youth.  Youth  is  our  perennial  idealist,  and  young 
his  Fame?*  readers  find  in  his  work  precisely  the  f  aith.and  cheer 

that  keep  courage  and  nobility  alive  in  the  world. 
Besides,  even  if  the  time  should  come  when  Emerson  shall  be 
no  longer  actually  needed,  it  seems  impossible  that  he  should 
be  forgotten.  His  service  to  his  own  day  was  too  great.  By 
his  call  to  independence  and  intellectual  honesty  at  a  time 
when  Americans  were  intellectually  subservient,  he  set  New 
England,  and  through  New  England,  America,  finally  free. 
He  went  himself  straight  to  the  fountain-heads  of  wisdom  and 
inspiration — to  Plato,  Confucius,  Christ;  but  even  them  he 
treated  as  brothers,  not  as  masters.  For  he  was  no  more  to 
be  intoxicated  by  the  wine  of  other  men's  truth  than  he  was  to 
be  caught  by  the  glitter  of  falsehood  and  sham.  Calm,  sane, 
self-centred,  undistempered  by  enthusiasms,  on  the  one  hand 
bowing  to  no  popular  idol,  on  the  other  standing  his  grOfwia 
with  our  common  humanity  when  many  apostles  of  the 
Transcendental  faith  were  swept  off  their  feet,  he  was  just 
such  a  man  as  is  needed  in  an  age  of  shifting  faith  and  widen 
ing  knowledge, — a  man  to  proclaim  anew  the  sanctity  of  the 
individual  conscience  and  to  declare  that  things  are  not  in 
the  saddle,  but  that  men  are  still  masters  of  their  fate. 

HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU,  1817-1862 

To  call  Thoreau  a  Transcendentalist  would  be  somewhat 
misleading.  His  place  in  this  chapter  is  determined  by  the 
fact  that  his  lot  was  cast  among  the  Concord  thinkers — he 
was  the  only  one  of  note  born  at  Concord — who  made  the 
new  philosophy  such  a  potent  factor  in  New  England  thought 
and  life.  He  came  to  manhood  precisely  at  the  time  when 
the  doctrines  were  taking  definite  shape,  and  it  was  impos 
sible  that  he  should  not  come  somewhat  under  their  influence. 


170  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

His  relations,  too,  with  Emerson  were  very  close;  but  he  was 
severely  independent,  both  as  man  and  as  thinker,  and, 
apart  from  an  occasional  visit  to  the  meetings  of  the  Trans 
cendental  Club  and  a  few  contributions  to  The  Dial.,  he  was 
scarcely  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  circle.  He  was,  indeed 
a  philosopher  after  Emerson's  own  heart,  living  sturdily 
the  doctrine  that  Emerson  preached,  and  going  steadily 
his  self-appointed  way.  Often  puzzling  and  sometimes 
repelling,  yet  always  fresh  and  stimulating,  he  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  figures  in  our  literary  history. 

On  his  mother's  side  Thoreau  was  of  old  New  England 
stock,  and  he  is  said  to  have  drawn  most  of  his  traits  from 

that  side.    His  name  shows  his  French  extraction. 

His  paternal  grandfather  came  to  America  from 
the  island  of  Jersey  just  before  the  Revolutionary  War.  His 
grandmother  bore  the  good  Scotch  name  of  Burns.  His 
father  was  a  pencilmaker,  a  small,  plain,  deaf,  unobtrusive 
man.  Henry  was  born  in  1817  (the  year  Emerson  entered 
college)  and  he  spent  at  Concord  nearly  all  of  the  forty-five 
years  of  his  life.  As  a  boy  he  drove  his  mother's  cow  to  pas 
ture,  as  Emerson  had  done  at  Boston.  He  learned  the  family 
trade  of  pencilmaking,  but  abandoned  it  when  he  became 
proficient,  not  desiring  to  do  again  what  he  had  done  once. 
We  are  reminded  of  Carlyle  's  undertaking  law  because  of  the 
difficulty  of  succeeding  in  it,  and  then  abandoning  it  because 
it  offered  no  reward  but  money.  Later,  however,  Thoreau 
did  sometimes  help  his  father  in  his  business,  which  grew  to  be 
mainly  the  preparation  of  plumbago  for  electrotyping.  He 
was  graduated  from  Harvard  at  the  age  of  twenty,  accom 
plished,  as  scholarship  went,  in  rhetoric,  Latin,  Greek,  and 
mathematics.  After  graduation  he  was  school-teacher, 
lecturer,  surveyor,  pencilmaker,  farmer,  and  recluse,  by 
turns.  His  biography  from  twenty  to  twenty-four  he  con 
densed  into  the  following  notes:  "Kept  town  school  a 


THOREAU  171 

fortnight;  began  the  big  Red  Journal,  October,  1837;  found 
my  first  arrow-head;  wrote  a  lecture  (my  first)  on  'Society,' 
March  14,  1838,  and  read  it  before  the  Lyceum;  went  to 
Maine  for  a  school  in  May,  1838;  commenced  school  in  the 
Parkham  house  in  the  summer  of  that  year;  wrote  an  essay 
on  'Sound  and  Silence,'  December,  1838;  fall  of  1839,  up  the 
Merrimac  to  the  White  Mountains;  the  Red  Journal,  of 
596  pages,  ended  June,  1840;  Journal  of  396  pages  ended 
January  31,  1841." 

It  was  a  life  in  which  the  picking  up  of  an  arrow-head  or 
the  discovery  of  a  richer  blueberry  patch  were  events,  and  the 
election  of  a  new  President  but  an  incident.  He  lived  two  or 
three  years  in  the  house  of  Emerson  as  mechanic,  gardener, 
and  companion  of  Emerson's  children;  spent  six  months  at 
Staten  Island  as  tutor  to  the  children  of  Emerson's  brother 
William;  traversed  the  length  of  Cape  Cod  on  foot;  and  made 
various  expeditions  to  the  Maine  woods  and  Canada.  His 
two  years'  retreat  at  Walden,  through  which  he  became 
famous,  was  only  in  keeping  with  the  general  tenor  of  his  life. 
The  man,  whose  first  lecture  was  upon  the  subject  of  "Soci 
ety,"  always  lived  on  the  outskirts  of  society  or  avoided  it 
altogether.  Walden  Pond  is  a  small  lake  in  the  Walden 
woods,  one  mile  south  of  Concord.  There,  in  the  spring  of 
1845,  on  a  piece  of  Emerson's  woodland,  Thoreau  built  a 
hut,  cutting  the  timbers  for  it  with  an  ax  which  he  borrowed 
from  Mr.  Alcott,  and  which  he  returned,  he  boasted,  sharper 
than  he  received  it.  This  cabin  he  made  his  home  for  the 
next  two  years.  Brook  Farm  was  a  social  experiment; 
Thoreau's  might  be  called  an  unsocial  one.  He  was  not, 
however,  turning  his  back  on  family  and  friends,  whom  he 
often  visited,  but  only  gratifying  his  love  of  wild  ways,  and 
putting  into  practice  some  of  his  ideas  about  economy  and 
simplicity  of  living.  He  says  himself:  "I  went  to  the  woods 
because  I  wished  to  live  deliberately,  to  front  only  the 


172  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

essential  facts  of  life,  and  see  if  I  could  not  learn  what  it  had 
to  teach,  and  not,  when  I  came  to  die,  discover  that  I  had  not 
lived."  He  found  in  this  seclusion  full  opportunity  to  do  the 
two  things  he  cared  most  about — observe  and  enjoy  nature, 
and  reflect  upon  the  ways  of  men.  The  expenses  of  a  year's 
living  of  this  sort  he  could  meet  by  working  about  six  weeks. 
The  rest  of  the  time  was  free  for  rambling,  studying,  and 
writing.  In  this  manner  he  wrote  the  greater  part  of 
Walden,  which,  however,  he  did  not  succeed  in  getting 
published  until  1854.  Before  that  he  published  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers  (1849),  the  outcome  of  an 
expedition  made  with  his  elder  brother  shortly  after  he  left 
college.  The  larger  part  of  the  edition — some  seven  hundred 
copies — he  had  to  store  in  his  garret.  These  two  were  the 
only  books  published  during  his  lifetime.  He  returned  to 
civilization  after  his  two  years'  experiment,  but  continued 
his  explorations  a-field,  and  died  in  1862,  in  some  measure 
the  victim  of  the  hardships  which  his  gypsy  instincts  were 
constantly  leading  him  to  suffer.  He  died  bravely,  declaring, 
as  he  had  declared  when  he  faced  life  at  twenty-four,  that  he 
"loved  his  fate  to  the  very  core  and  rind."  His  too  early 
loss  was  fittingly  mourned  in  more  than  one  tender  lament 
by  his  friend,  Ellery  Channing,  like  himself  a  passionate 
nature-lover :: — 

"The  swallow  is  flying  over, 

But  he  will  not  come  to  me; 
He  flits,  my  daring  rover, 

From  land  to  land,  from  sea  to  sea; 
Where  hot  Bermuda's  reef 
Its  barrier  lifts  to  fortify  the  shore, 
Above  the  surf's  wild  roar 
He  darts  as  swiftly  o'er, — 
But  he  who  heard  his  cry  of  spring 
Hears  that  no  more,  heeds  not  his  wing." 


THOREAU  173 

Thoreau  is  scarcely  to  be  estimated  as  other  men,  from 
whom  he  stands  so  far  apart  in  almost  all  respects.  He 

was  a  riddle  even  to  those  who  knew  him  well. 

Hawthorne  wrote  in  his  journal:  "Mr.  Thoreau 
dined  with  us.  He  is  a  singular  character — a  young  man  with 
much  of  wild,  original  nature  still  remaining  in  him.  He  is 
as  ugly  as  sin — long  nosed,  queer-mouthed,  and  with  uncouth 
and  somewhat  rustic,  though  courteous  manners.  But  his 
ugliness  is  of  an  honest  and  agreeable  fashion,  and  becomes 
him  much  better  than  beauty."  Mrs.  Hawthorne,  after 
hearing  him  lecture,  wrote:  "Mr.  Thoreau  has  risen  above  all 
his  arrogance  of  manner,  and  is  as  gentle,  simple,  ruddy,  and 
meek  as  all  geniuses  should  be;  and  now  his  great  blue  eyes 
fairly  outshine  and  put  into  shade  a  nose  which  I  once  thought 
must  make  him  uncomely  forever."  To  Rose  Hawthorne 
Lathrop  he  seemed  "sad  as  a  pinetree,"  though  to  the  few 
friends  to  whom  he  warmed  he  was  all  sunshine,  and  he  could 
both  sing  and  dance,  and  would  play  with  kittens  by  the  half 
hour.  His  unbending  nature  brought  him  much  criticism 
which  a  little  compliance  or  a  little  explanation  might  have 
saved  him.  A  schoolmate  who  knew  him  for  a  good  whittler 
once  asked  him  to  make  a  bow  and  arrow,  but  he  refused  with 
out  giving  the  reason — that  he  had  no  knife.  On  another 
occasion  he  was  accused  of  stealing  a  knife.  He  could  easily 
have  proved  his  absence  at  the  time,  but  he  preferred  merely 
to  make  denial,  letting  his  companions  suspect  what  they 
pleased.  It  is  hard  to  tell  whether  he  simply  disliked  ordi 
nary  social  intercourse  or  whether  he  feared  it.  The  woods 
meant  to  him  freedom,  and  he  was  like  the  muskrat,  which, 
he  said,  "will  gnaw  its  third  leg  off  to  be  free."  He  was 
constantly  tempted  to  climb  over  a  back  fence  and  go  across 
lots  rather  than  run  the  gantlet  of  the  houses  fronting  each 
other  on  the  street.  Men  of  convivial  natures,  like  Lowell  or 
Stevenson,  are  repelled  by  such  an  ascetic  spirit,  and  are 


174  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

likely  to  prove  unsympathetic  critics.  It  requires  the 
unruffled  tolerance  of  an  Emerson  to  see  all  of  his  good 
points  and  none  of  his  bad;  and  his  habit  of  contradiction 
made  even  Emerson  say,  "Thoreau  is,  with  difficulty, 

sweet." 

But  Emerson  and  a  few  others,  like  Ellery  Channing, 
learned  to  make  the  right  allowances.  Many  of  his  declara 
tions  were  only  half-truth,  and  much  of  his  profession  was 
bravado.  "  Blessed  are  they,"  he  would  say,  "who  never  read 
men's  affairs,  for  they  shall  see  nature,  and,  through  her, 
God."  Yet  he  took  a  keen  interest  in  society  at  large  and 
even  in  politics,  and  he  could  take  an  active  part  when  he  was 
sufficiently  aroused.  He  went  to  jail  rather  than  pay  his  tax, 
when  he  felt  that  the  tax  was  supporting  a  government  that 
supported  slavery.  It  was  his  way  of  protesting  against  a 
great  wrong;  and  when  Emerson  looked  into  his  cell  and  said, 
"Henry,  why  are  you  here?"  his  reply  was,  "Why  are  you 
not  here?"  He  met  John  Brown  in  1857,  and  two  years 
later,  after  the  capture  of  Brown  and  before  his  execution,  he 
spoke  out  boldly  in  his  defence  at  Concord,  Worcester,  and 
Boston.  It  is  unfortunate  that  Lowell  should  have  found  in 
such  a  man  so  much  imitation,  indolence,  and  selfishness,  and 

so  little  else. 

Not  many  of  us  will  care  to  accept  the  philosophy  of 
W olden,  so  extreme  is  it,  and,  on  the  outside,  so  bitter,  though 
with  much  sweetness  at  the  core.     Every  thought- 
Philosophy.    f^  ^^  must  gee  much  in  Qur  civiiization  to 

deplore,  but  if  he  be  right-minded  he  will  give  helpful  and  not 
destructive  criticism.  We  shall  not  remedy  the  faults  by 
going  back  to  barbarism.  It  is  easy  to  corner  Thoreau  in  an 
argument.  He  was  always  afraid  he  should  die  without 
having  lived;  and,  according  to  his  own  definition,  that  a  man 
is  rich  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  things  he  can  get  along 
without,  he  certainly  lived  like  a  baron.  But  his  method  of 


THOREAU  175 

living  deep  and  "sucking  out  all  the  marrow  of  life"  by  going 
back  to  nature  and  the  barest  terms  of  existence,  involved  as 
much  loss  as  gain.  You  can  get  along  without  a  plow  if  you 
recognize  no  social  obligations  and  have  no  wife  or  children 
to  feed.  You  can  get  along  without  a  hoe  if  you  are  willing 
to  live  on  cow-parsnips.  But  it  is  the  better  teaching  of 
civilization  to  get  along  with  as  many  things  as  possible. 
"Why  newspapers,  and  post-offices,  and  railroads?"  asks 
Thoreau.  But  why,  then,  even  an  ax,  since  the  beavers  used 
their  teeth?  The  ax  and  the  railroad  alike  represent  expedi 
tion  and  expediency.  There  is  a  poetic  view,  too.  Thoreau 
protested  against  so  much  hammering  of  stone,  but  Emerson 
celebrated  the  beauty  of  man's  achievements  as  being  one 
with  the  beauty  of  nature's : — 

"Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone, 
And  Morning  opes  with  haste  her  lids 
To  gaze  upon  the  pyramids." 

But  we  soon  learn  that  Thoreau  is  deliberately  exagger 
ating,  partly  for  the  love  of  it,  though  mostly  to  drive  home  a 
truth.  The  thing  for  us  to  do  is  to  read  him  intelligently, 
with  fair,  open  minds,  not  accepting  everything,  but  picking 
out  the  grains  of  truth,  and  taking  innocent  pleasure  mean 
while  in  watching  the  chaff  of  wit  and  cynicism  fly.  There  is  a 
characteristic  passage  in  Walden,  for  example,  upon  the 
"sleepers"  that  support  the  rails  in  the  bed  of  a  railroad,  each 
one  of  which,  Thoreau  says,  is  a  man — an  Irishman,  or  a 
Yankee  man.  He  is  thinking  of  the  workmen  whose  lives 
have  gone  into  such  labor.  "And  when  they  run  over  a  man 
who  is  walking  in  his  sleep,  a  supernumerary  sleeper  in  the 
wrong  position,  and  wake  him  up,  they  suddenly  stop  the 
cars,  and  make  a  hue  and  cry  about  it,  as  if  this  were  an 
exception."  This  is  more  clever  than  logical.  The  laborer's 
life  is  not  necessarily  sacrificed  to  his  labor.  Action  is 


176  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

the  law  of  being,  and  a  man  lives  the  longer  and  the  better  for 
working.  Yet  the  general  meaning  of  the  passage  is  clear, 
and  also  true, — that  excessive  industrialism  imperils  both 
body  and  spirit.  Much,  indeed,  lies  in  knowing  how  to  read 
Thoreau.  His  philosophy  is  more  of  a  curiosity  than  a  creed 
to  be  adopted;  yet  many  of  his  ideas  hold  much  truth,  and 
only  need  sensible  modification  to  be  applied  to  life. 

Thus  prepared,  we  can  read  safely  and  with  amusement 
the  sharpest  passages  of  Walden: — 

"I  would  observe,  by  the  way,  that  it  costs  me  nothing  for  cur 
tains,  for  I  have  no  gazers  to  shut  out  but  the  sun  and  moon,  and  I 
am  willing  that  they  should  look  in.  The  moon  will  not  sour  milk 
not  taint  meat  of  mine,  nor  will  the  sun  injure  my  furniture  or  fade 
my  carpet;  and  if  he  is  sometimes  too  warm  a  friend,  I  find  it  still 
better  economy  to  retreat  behind  some  curtain  nature  has  provided 
than  to  add  a  single  item  to  the  details  of  housekeeping.  A  lady 
once  offered  me  a  mat,  but  as  I  had  no  room  to  spare  within  the  house, 
noF  time  to  spare  within  or  without  to  shake  it,  I  declined  it,  prefer 
ring  to  wipe  my  feet  on  the  sod  before  my  door.  It  is  best  to  avoid 
the  beginnings  of  evil. 

"Not  long  since  I  was  present  at  the  auction  of  a  deacon's  effects, 
for  his  life  had  not  been  ineffectual: — 

'The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them.' 

As  usual,  a  great  proportion  was  trumpery  which  had  begun  to  accumu 
late  in  his  father's  day.  Among  the  rest  was  a  dried  tape-worm.  And 
now,  after  lying  half  a  century  in  his  garret  and  other  dust  holes,  these 
things  were  not  burned;  instead  of  a  bonfire,  or  purifying  destruction 
of  them,  there  was  an  auction,  or  increasing  of  them.  The  neighbors 
eagerly  collected  to  view  them,  and  carefully  transported  them  to  their 
garrets  and  dust-holes,  to  lie  there  until  their  estates  are  settled,  when 
they  will  start  again.  When  a  man  dies  he  kicks  the  dust." 

What  is  all  this  but  teaching  in  a  quaint  way  what  Lowell 
taught  in  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  that  "bubbles  we  buy 
with  a  whole  soul's  tasking"  and  forget  that  "heaven  is  given 
away "  ?  Thoreau  himself  says :  "  Superfluous  wealth  can  buy 
superfluities  only.  Money  is  not  required  to  buy  one  neces 
sary  of  the  soul."  And  the  whole  gospel  of  Walden  might 


THOREAU  177 

almost  be  reduced  to  the  formula,  'Simplify  your  life  and 
elevate  your  thoughts;'  for  everywhere,  in  one  form  or  anoth 
er,  beneath  all  the  eccentricity  and  exaggeration,  that  gospel 
can  be  read. 

The  foregoing  passage  will  serve  also  to  illustrate  Thor- 
eau's  style.  We  scarcely  think  of  him  as  a  humorist,  yet 
there  is  nearly  always  some  humor  lurking  behind 
his  cynicism,  scarcely  the  less  enjoyable  for  the 
tinge  of  bitterness.  His  best  aphorisms  are  likely  to  have  a 
humorous  twist:  "Some  circumstantial  evidence  is  very 
strong,  as  when  you  find  a  trout  in  milk."  The  force  of  the 
style  is  also  noteworthy;  the  paragraphs  above  end  with  an 
almost  startling  abruptness.  Indeed,  few  philosophers,  if  we 
may  dignify  Thoreau  with  the  term,  have  written  more 
forcibly — with  more  terseness,  directness,  and  concreteness  of 
imagery.  He  was  a  past  master  in  the  art  of  putting 
things.  Emerson  praises  him  for  a  better  rhetorician  than 
himself:  "I  find  the  same  thoughts,  the  same  spirit  that  is  in 
me,  but  he  takes  a  step  beyond  and  illustrates  by  excellent 
images  that  which  I  should  have  conveyed  in  a  sleepy  general 
ization."  And  so  it  is.  "Trust  thyself,"  says  Emerson: 
"every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string."  Says  Thoreau: 
"The  head  monkey  at  Paris  puts  on  a  traveller's  cap,  and  all 
the  monkeys  in  America  do  the  same."  Here  is  the  same 
thought,  the  same  lesson,  only  Thoreau,  instead  of  encourag 
ing  us  to  independence,  ridicules  our  conformity,  and  does  it 
with  a  force  and  concreteness  that  go  quite  beyond  Emer 
son's.  But  of  course  the  quiet  strength  of  Emerson  is  more 
effective  in  the  end. 

The  parts  of  Thoreau's  work  upon  which  his  fame  rests 
most  securely  today  are  his  nature  studies.  He  may  have 
boasted  over-much  of  his  love  for  nature  and  unduly  taunted 
other  men  for  their  indifference,  but  his  own  steadfast  and 
reverent  love  is  beyond  question.  He  was  a  veritable  faun. 


178  THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

sealed  from  birth  of  the  most  ancient  order  of  Nature's  wood 
men.  Cities  he  dreaded  like  a  Bedouin's  camel,  and  he  was 

nowhere  so  happy  in  Boston  as  at  the  railway 
Naturalist."  station  waiting  for  the  cars  to  take  him  away. 

"There  is  in  my  nature,  methinks,  a  singular 
yearning  toward  all  wildness."  He  was  prouder  to  have  a 
sparrow  alight  on  his  shoulder  than  he  would  have  been  to 
wear  an  epaulet.  He  prized  much  less  his  accomplishments 
in  Greek  and  Latin  than  his  ability  to  find  his  way  through 
the  woods  in  the  darkest  night,  to  take  a  fish  from  the  water 
with  his  hand,  to  eat  a  wild  crab-apple  without  making  a  wry 
face.  Agassiz,  for  whom  he  made  collections  of  fishes, 
praised  his  sagacity.  His  attitude  toward  nature,  however, 
was  the  poet's  rather  than  the  naturalist's.  He  was  lured 
by  the  charm  of  her  variety  and  mystery,  and  cared  more  to 
feel  than  to  know.  And  his  wide  reading  of  the  best  litera 
ture  only,  his  command  of  language,  and  his  imagination, 
gave  him  a  power  to  interpret  his  feelings  that  is  rare  among 
men  of  his  stamp.  It  is  interesting  to  note  how  inevitably 
he  passes  from  observation  to  sympathy : — 

"Shad  are  still  taken  in  the  basin  of  Concord  River  at  Lowell, 
where  they  are  said  to  be  a  month  earlier  than  the  Merrimac  shad, 
on  account  of  the  warmth  of  the  water.  Still  patiently,  almost  pa 
thetically,  with  instinct  not  to  be  discouraged,  not  to  be  reasoned  with, 
revisiting  their  old  haunts,  as  if  their  stern  fates  would  relent,  and  still 
met  by  the  Corporation  with  its  dam.  Poor  shad!  where  is  thy  re 
dress?  When  Nature  gave  thee  instinct,  gave  she  thee  the  heart  to 
bear  thy  fate?  Still  wandering  the  sea  in  thy  scaly  armor  to  in 
quire  humbly  at  the  mouths  of  rivers  if  man  has  perchance  left  them 
free  for  thee  to  enter." 

Poetry  reveals  itself  every  where,  in  his  phrasing.  The  haze 
is  "the  sun's  dust  of  travel."  The  ice  of  the  pond  "whoops" 
on  a  winter's  night.  Toadstools  are  "round- tables  of  the 
swamp  gods."  Some  taller  mast  of  pine  rises  in  the  midst  of 
the  woods  "like  a  pagoda."  The  crowing  of  the  wild  Indian 


THOREAU  179 

pheasant  would  "put  nations  on  the  alert."  Moreover,  there 
are  records  of  sounds  and  visions  that  none  but  a  poet  could 
hear  or  see: — 

"The  winds  which  passed  over  my  dwelling  were  such  as  sweep 
over  the  ridges  of  mountains,  bearing  the  broken  strains,  or  celestial 
parts  only,  of  terrestrial  music.  The  morning  wind  forever  blows, 
the  poem  of  creation  is  uninterrupted;  but  few  are  the  ears  that  hear 
it.  Olympus  is  but  the  outside  of  the  earth  everywhere." 

"Time  is  but  the  stream  I  go  a-fishing  in.  I  drink  at  it;  but  while 
I  drink  I  see  the  sandy  bottom  and  detect  how  shallow  it  is.  Its  thin 
current  slides  away,  but  eternity  remains.  I  would  drink  deeper;  fish 
in  the  sky,  whose  bottom  is  pebbly  with  stars." 

Sometimes  he  runs  into  rhyme  and  becomes  a  poet  con 
fessed;  and  though  his  verse,  as  such,  is  very  erratic,  his 
delicate  lines  on  Smoke, — 

"Light  winged  smoke,  Icarian  bird! 
Melting  thy  pinions  in  thy  upward  flight, 
Lark  without  song,  and  messenger  of  dawn," — 

are  worth  all  the  praise  they  have  received. 

In  the  four  years  immediately  following  Thoreau's  death 
five  books  were  published  from  the  mass  of  manuscript  which 
he  left — Excursions,  The  Maine  Woods,  Cape  Cod,  Letters, 
and  A  Yankee  in  Canada.  To  these  of  late  years  have  been 
added  five  more— Spring,  Summer,  etc.  They  give  him  a 
very  dignified  place  in  the  library  and  assure  him  of  a  perman 
ence  of  which  he  little  dreamed.  In  his  own  day,  when  the 
polished  N.  P.  Willis  of  New  York  was  a  favorite  among  the 
younger  writers,  few  knew  his  name  and  none  would  have 
ventured  to  prophesy  for  him  any  place  in  American  letters. 
But  time  has  slowly  reversed  the  verdict.  Willis's  little 
light  is  flickering,  Thoreau's  begins  to  burn  with  the  steadi 
ness  of  a  fixed  star.  The  day  is  past,  too,  for  the  criticism 
that  he  was  only  a  reflection  of  Emerson.  Each  owed 
something  to  the  other,  and  doubtless  Thoreau's  debt  was  the 


180  THE    TRANSCENDENTAL   MOVEMENT 

greater,  for  he  was  the  younger  man  and  his  was  the  inferior 
mind.  But  the  difference  between  them  was  greater  than  the 
likeness.  Emerson's  books  belong  on  those  shelves  where  we 
put  the  philosophical  works  of  Plato,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Mon 
taigne,  and  Bacon.  Thoreau's  belong-  ^vith  that  group  of 
more  modest  classics  of  the  forest  and  field  that  gather  about 
White's  Selborne  and  Walton's  Complete  Angler. 


CHAPTER  VII 

NATIONAL  LIFE    AND    CULTURE.— LONGFELLOW, 
WHITTIER,    LOWELL,    HOLMES,    WHITMAN 

Of  the  period  of  our  literature  now  under  consideration — 
the  prolific  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century — four  or  five 
major  writers  and  countless  minor  ones  still  remain  to  be 
treated.  Placing  them  here  in  a  single  group  is,  perhaps,  on 
the  ground  of  coherence,  a  course  not  entirely  justifiable. 
Yet  to  make  any  of  the  divisions  that  suggest  themselves 
would  seem  to  be  even  less  justifiable.  A  separation,  for 
instance,  into  poets  and  prose-writers  is  scarcely  possible, 
since  many  of  the  writers  were  both,  and  to  divide  along  other 
lines,  as  into  Cambridge  scholars,  anti-slavery  agitators,  and 
the  like,  would  again  be  only  to  work  confusion  by  making 
divisions  that  seriously  overlap.  It  seems  better  therefore 
to  keep  the  writers  together,  regarding  them  broadly  as  con 
tributors,  each  in  his  way,  to  our  national  life  and  character — 
as  co-workers  toward  the  one  end  of  upbuilding  a  modern 
nation  of  political  unity  and  of  continuous  moral  and  intel 
lectual  growth.  It  is  true,  the  writers  we  have  already 
treated  might  be  regarded  in  the  same  light,  but  there  is  at 
least  this  difference,  that  they  worked  more  specifically  to 
literary  or  personal  ends,  while  the  men  whom  we  have  now 
to  consider  were  in  closer  touch  with  our  social  organization, 
and  their  writings  and  speeches  largely  grew  out  of,  or  con 
tributed  toward,  the  wide  activities  among  which  they  moved. 

ORATORY 

Oratory  in  America,  which  has  perhaps  had  a  more  contin 
uous  history  than  any  other  form  of  letters  except  theology, 
reached  its  highest  development  between  1830  and  1860.  This 

181 


182  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

is,  of  course,  only  another  manifestation  of  the  great  intel 
lectual  and  artistic  energy  that  attended  the  development  and 
fixing  of  our  national  character,  the  more  direct  stimulus  in 
this  case  being  found  in  the  political  conditions — in  the  diffi 
cult  adjustment  of  national  principles,  and  especially  in  the 
unsettled  and  continually  vexing  issue  of  slavery.  But  our 
oratory  scarcely  rose  to  the  level  attained  in  other  literary 
forms.  It  was  made  illustrious  by  at  least  two  eminently  great 
men — Webster  and  Lincoln — but  it  never  united  in  one  man 
all  the  original  genius  and  the  eloquent  and  scholarly  virtues 
that  have  made  the  speeches  of  Demosthenes,  Cicero,  Bossuet, 
and  Burke,  permanent  classics  in  the  world's  literature. 

Daniel  Webster,  we  are  still  disposed  to  regard  as  our  fore 
most  exponent  of  deliberative  and  forensic  eloquence.  He 

t  j  had,  to  begin  with,  physical  advantages  that 

Webster^  seemed  to  proclaim  him  an  even  greater  man  than 
he  was.  Carry le,  a  master  at  portraiture,  saw 
him  once  and  described  him  in  a  letter  to  Emerson:  "The 
tanned  complexion;  that  amorphous,  crag-like  face;  the  dull 
black  eyes  under  their  precipice  of  eyebrow,  like  dull  anthra 
cite  furnaces,  needing  only  to  be  blown;  the  mastiff  mouth, 
accurately  closed.  .  .  .  He  is  a  magnificent  specimen; 
you  might  say  to  all  the  world,  'This  is  your  Yankee  Eng 
lishman,  such  limbs  we  make  in  Yankeeland.' '  Born  on  a 
backwoods  farm  in  New  Hampshire  at  the  close  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  and  graduated  from  Dartmouth  in  1801, 
Webster  rapidly  rose  in  the  legal  profession,  until  he  was  sent 
to  Congress  in  1813.  He  shortly  afterward  took  up  his 
residence  at  Boston,  and  from  that  time  on,  as  representa 
tive,  senator,  secretary  of  state,  and  Whig  aspirant  for  the 
Presidency,  he  was,  as  Carlyle  put  it,  "the  notablest  of 
our  notabilities."  His  supremacy  in  American  statesman 
ship  was  somewhat  comparable  to  that,  in  later  years,  of 
Gladstone  in  English  or  of  Bismarck  in  Prussian. 


ORATORY  183 

Webster's  great  service  was  done  in  the  stormy  Congres 
sional  debates  of  1830-1832,  when  he  came  forward  in  oppo 
sition  to  the  principle  of  state  sovereignty,  and  helped  to  fix 
finally  the  supreme  power  and  authority  of  the  federal 
constitution.  He  made  himself  the  champion  of  the  national 
idea,  of  complete  union,  and  it  is  fitting  that  he  should  be 
remembered  by  those  famous  words  with  which  he  closed  the 
speech  in  reply  to  Hayne:  "Liberty  and  Union,  now  and 
forever,  one  and  inseparable."  The  great  blemish  upon  his 
career  was  his  weakness  in  not  facing  squarely  the  question 
of  slave-holding  when  that  issue  was  approaching  a  crisis. 
By  supporting  the  compromise  measures  of  1850  instead  of 
throwing  his  influence  with  the  radical  opponents  of  slavery, 
he  added  to  the  confidence  of  the  slave  power  and  con 
tributed  much  to  the  final  disastrous  results.  Whittier,  in 
the  poem  Ichabod,  lashed  him  severely  for  his  defection.  But 
Webster  suffered  to  the  full  for  his  weakness,  and  many  years 
after  his  death  Whittier  was  glad  to  do  his  memory  justice, 
mourning,  in  The  Lost  Occasion,  that  Webster  had  not  been 
spared  till  the  day  of  actual  disunion,  assured  that  no  stronger 
voice  than  his  would  have  then 

"Called  out  the  utmost  might  of  men, 
To  make  the  Union's  charter  free 
And  strengthen  law  by  liberty." 

The  best  examples  of  Webster's  forensic  pleading  are  to  be 
found  in  the  argument  on  the  Dartmouth  College  Case  before 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1818  and  in  his  speech  at 
the  White  murder  trial  at  Salem  in  1829.  His  great  delib 
erative  speeches  in  the  Senate  have  already  been  mentioned — 
the  Reply  to  Hayne  in  1830,  and  the  "Seventh  of  March 
Speech"  in  favor  of  compromise  in  1850.  His  best  public  ad 
dresses  include  one  delivered  at  the  anniversary  at  Plymouth 
in  1820,  one  at  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the  Bunker 
Hill  Monument  and  another  at  its  completion,  and  a  eulogy 


184  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

on  Adams  and  Jefferson.  His  oratory  was  mainly  of  the  old 
type,  only  a  few  degrees  removed  from  the  half-pedantic 
classicism  that  was  the  ideal  of  the  early  academic  orators. 
Yet  he  was  undeniably  eloquent,  both  in  the  conventional 
and  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word  —  clear  in  thought,  strong  and 
pure  and  sonorous  in  diction,  with  a  beauty  of  imagery  and 
an  animation  of  style  that  have  set  his  printed  speeches 
among  the  select  examples  of  modern  oratorical  prose.  What 
those  speeches  must  have  been  in  utterance  all  the  enthu 
siastic  accounts  of  their  hearers  will  not  suffice  for  us  to 
realize,  since  the  force  of  the  speaker's  personality  must  have 
counted  for  even  more  than  his  words,  lending  impressiveness 
to  his  simplest  and  calmest  statements,  and  enabling  him, 
when  deeply  stirred,  to  carry  everything  before  him. 

Henry  Clay,  who  belonged  to  Virginia  by  birth  and  to 
Kentucky  by  residence,  came  into  public  life  somewhat  before 
Henry  clay,  Webster,  and  rose  to  be  the  recognized  leader  of 
J7c7."c8a5ihoun,the  Whig  party,  and,  with  the  exception  of  Web- 
1782-1850.  gter^  «ts  foremost  man>  He  was  three  times  a 


candidate  for  the  Presidency,  and  once  narrowly  missed 
election.  Though  opposed  to  slavery,  he  wTas  not  radical  in 
his  views.  As  the  chief  promoter  of  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  of  1820  and  the  author  of  the  compromise  measures  of 
1850,  he  earned  the  title  of  "the  great  pacificator."  As  an 
orator  he  held  and  swayed  audiences  as  effectually  as  ever 
Webster  did,  though  more  exclusively  by  his  personality  and 
his  rhetorical  gifts.  He  lacked  the  learning  and  depth  of  that 
great  stateman,  and  his  orations  are  now  little  read.  From 
farther  south,  and  with  wholly  southern  views  and  doctrines, 
came  John  C.  Calhoun,  of  South  Carolina.  It  was  he,  then 
president  of  the  Senate,  whom  Webster  was  really  attacking 
in  his  famous  Reply  to  Hayne  in  1830,  for  Calhoun  was  an 
ardent  believer  in  States'  Rights  and  was  the  author  of  the 
doctrine  of  Nullification.  He  was  scarcely  eloquent,  as  we 


ORATORY  185 

ordinarily  understand  the  term,  but  was  a  great  thinker,  and 
the  clearness  of  his  logic  was  conspicuous  in  everything  he 
said.  This,  coupled  with  his  earnestness  and  his  candor, 
gave  him  a  clear  title  to  his  fame. 

Massachusetts  produced  the  men  who  pressed  Webster 
most  closely  for  oratorical  honors  of  the  academic  kind — 
Rufus  Rufus  Choate,  the  lawyer,  and  Edward  Everett, 

1799-1859.  the  scholar,  statesman,  and  diplomatist.  Choate 
Everet?,  was  never  brought  into  the  same  great  conflicts  as 
1794-1865.  \Vebster,  his  eloquence  being  expended  before 
juries;  but  he  had  even  more  than  Webster's  scholarship 
and  refinement,  and,  with  a  fervid  imagination  and  an  inex 
haustible  flow  of  words,  he  exercised  over  emotional  hearers 
that  "spell"  which  it  was  long  thought  to  be  an  orator's  high 
est  virtue  to  exercise.  His  oratory  held  much  of  the  poetic 
quality,  and  is  seen  at  its  best  in  his  eulogies — the  eulogy,  for 
example,  on  Webster.  Everett,  who  began  life  as  an  editor 
and  professor  of  Greek,  held  many  high  positions:  he  was 
governor  of  Massachusetts,  minister  to  Great  Britain,  presi 
dent  of  Harvard  College,  Secretary  of  State,  and  United 
States  senator.  His  oratory  also  was  of  the  finished  and 
scholarly  type.  It  might  even  be  called  cold,  for  Everett 
lacked  the  personal  force  which  Choate  and  WTebster  pos 
sessed.  Yet  by  frequent  lectures  on  the  platform  he  came 
into  closer  touch  with  the  general  public  than  most  states 
men  of  his  day.  Emerson  testified  to  his  great  influence  on 
the  youth  of  New  England;  and  late  in  life  he  delivered  his 
famous  eulogy  on  Washington  one  hundred  and  fifty  times 
in  the  interest  of  the  Mount  Vernon  Association.  His  last 
important  oration  was  the  one  delivered  at  the  dedication 
of  the  national  cemetery  at  Gettysburg  in  1863 — an  occasion 
made  most  memorable  by  another  address,  the  unpreten 
tiously  noble  speech  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

Lincoln,  almost  the  antithesis  of  the  academic  orators, 


18f>  NATIONAL   LIFE    AND    CULTURE 

was  a  potent  influence  upon  what  might  be  called  the  modern 

school — that   school  which  discards  pedantic  phrases   and 

classical   allusions,   rather   avoids   rhetorical   cli- 

Abraham 

Lincoln,  maxes  and  other  effects,  and  depends  upon  a  less 
impassioned,  more  conversational  manner.  Lin 
coln's  training  was  obtained  in  actual  law-practice,  where  he 
had  to  confront  and  handle  real  issues  before  audiences 
immediately  concerned.  His  audiences,  too,  w^ere  of  the 
primitive  West,  more  keen  than  cultured.  He  practiced  at 
the  Illinois  bar  as  early  as  1837;  and  in  1858,  when  a  candidate 
for  the  United  States  senatorship  from  Illinois,  he  held  in  that 
state  the  series  of  joint  discussions  with  Stephen  A.  Douglas, 
largely  on  the  slavery  question,  which  made  him  famous. 
The  schooling  was  precisely  suited  to  the  man,  and  it  was  a 
wholly '  natural  result  that  the  more  momentous  addresses 
which  he  was  called  upon  later  to  deliver— his  two  inaugural 
addresses,  for  instance,  or  the  Gettysburg  address — should 
be  models  of  simplicity,  sincerity,  directness,  and  force. 
Whatever  virtues  lie  in  the  Saxon  character  and  may  be 
expressed  in  the  Saxon  tongue,  these  are  summed  up  in  the 
unadorned  eloquence  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  anti-slavery  movement  brought  forth  speakers  of 
many  kinds  in  many  places,  but  apart  from  Lincoln  and 
Charles  Sum- Garrison  (who  was  more  of  a  journalist  than  a 
Wendell  Phi7i^"sPeaker),  the  most  conspicuous  orators  identified 
Iips,i8ii-i884.witn  the  direct  issue  of  abolition  were  Charles 
Sumner  and  Wendell  Phillips,  both  of  Boston,  and  both  again 
orators  of  the  scholarly  type.  Sumner's  work  was  done 
chiefly  in  Congress,  where  he  was  recognized  for  years  as 
the  great  anti-slavery  leader.  Indeed,  the  history  of  Sum 
ner  is  virtually  the  history  of  the  anti-slavery  conflict.  His 
speeches  were  marked  by  soundness  of  reason  and  stateli- 
aess  of  style,  and  the  fifteen  published  volumes  of  them  make 
an  imposing  addition  to  our  literature.  The  speech  on 


HISTORY   AND    CRITICISM  187 

"The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations"  is  best  remembered. 
Wendell  Phillips  was  a  platform  orator,  who  made  public 
speaking  his  life-work.  His  long  service  to  the  abolitionists 
made  his  name,  like  Garrison's  and  Sumner's,  almost  syn 
onymous  with  their  cause.  As  an  orator  he  added  to  the 
learning,  grace,  and  polish  of  Everett,  something  more  of 
personal  force  that  grew  out  of  real  devotion,  however  mixed 
its  motives,  to  a  great  moral  principle.  After  the  war  he 
continued  in  the  lecture  field.  His  best-known  addresses  are 
those  on  "Toussaint  L'Ouverture"  and  "The  Lost  Arts." 

As  a  rule,  the  oratory  of  the  pulpit  leaves  a  less  permanent 
record  than  that  of  the  platform,  and  there  is  practically 
nothing  to  be  added  here  to  what  was  said  on  this  subject  in 
the  chapter  on  religion  and  philosophy  in  New  England.  In 
that  place  were  mentioned  the  Unitarian  ministers,  Channing 
and  others,  and  also  the  Congregationalists  Bushnell  of  Hart 
ford  and  Beecher  of  Brooklyn.  Doubtless  Beecher  was, 
though  somewhat  erratic,  one  of  our  most  versatile  and  bril 
liant  preachers.  But  even  though  we  extend  our  survey 
beyond  the  time-limit  of  this  chapter  to  the  present  day,  we 
can  find  no  other  to  mention  by  the  side  of  these,  unless  it  be 
Phillips  Brooks  (1835-1893),  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
church  at  Boston.  The  oratory  of  the  pulpit,  as  of  the  plat 
form  generally,  has  distinctly  waned. 

HISTORY  AND   CRITICISM 

The  historians,  so-called,  of  the  days  of  our  earliest  lit 
erature  were  scarcely  entitled  to  that  name.  Whatever  his 
tory  they  wrote  was  in  the  nature  of  chronicles  or  annals — 
dry,  ill-connected,  unexplained  relations  of  occurrences, 
without  the  insight,  imagination,  and  mastery  of  expression 
that  were  needed  to  make  literature.  On  the  other  hand, 
whatever  literature  they  wrote  was  the  narration  of  personal 
experiences,  useful  and  entertaining,  but  without  the  breadth 


188  NATIONAL  LIFE   AND   CULTURE 

of  vision  and  critical  spirit  that  would  have  made  worthy 
history.  Our  real  historians — men  with  a  mastery  of  facts, 
with  a  power  of  arranging  and  interpreting  those  facts,  and 
with  a  definite  artistic  purpose — appeared  only  with  the 
nineteenth  century. 

Irving's  excellent  work  in  this  field  has  already  been  de 
scribed.  Passing  over  the  names  of  the  early  and  minor 
Geor  eBan  wr^ers  °^  tne  century — Sparks,  the  biographer, 
isoo*  1891  w^a  k*s  wortny  liyes  °f  Washington  and  Franklin ; 
Hildreth,  with  his  discriminating  but  uninterest 
ing  history  of  the  United  States;  Palfrey,  with  his  very  able 
but  also  unromantic  history  of  New  England;  J.  S.  C.  Abbott, 
with  biographies  and  a  history  of  the  Civil  War;  and  James 
Parton,  a  later  biographer,  with  lives  of  Franklin,  Voltaire, 
and  others, — we  come  to  the  name  of  one  who,  although  by 
no  means  the  greatest,  was  long  the  most  conspicuous  of  our 
historians — George  Bancroft.  The  publication  of  Bancroft's 
History  of  the  United  States,  in  ten  successive  volumes,  ex 
tended  from  1834  to  1874,  with  a  revised  edition  in  1883. 
How  careful  and  exhaustive  his  researches  were  may  be 
inferred  from  this  fact,  and  also  from  the  fact  that  the  portion 
of  our  history  covered  by  them  extends  only  to  1789.  It  was 
a  huge  undertaking,  to  which  Bancroft  brought  all  the  re 
sources  of  wealth,  training,  and  social  and  political  influence — 
everything,  in  short,  but  genius.  He  lived  at  Washington 
where  he  had  free  access  to  the  government  archives,  and  he 
collected  besides  an  enormous  private  library  of  transcripts 
of  documents  fr6m  all  parts  of  the  world.  Invaluable,  how 
ever,  as  his  great  work  is,  its  over-patriotic  and  slightly 
partisan  bias  prevents  it  from  being  accepted  as  a  final 
authority,  while  its  want  of  picturesqueness  in  matter  and 
style  makes  it  hard  to  read,  and  puts  it  quite  without  the  pale 
of  literature. 

Two  of  our  historians  were  attracted,  like  Irving,   to 


HISTORY   AND    CRITICISM  189 

foreign  themes.  It  was  William  Hickling  Prescott  in  favor 
of  whom  Irving  gave  up  his  long-cherished  plan  of  writing  a 
w.H.Prescott.history  of  the  Spanish  conquest  of  Mexico.  Pres- 
j?L6~Motiey,  c°tt,  a  native  of  Salem,  and  a  graduate  of  Harvard, 
1814-1877.  devoted  a  life  of  scholarly  leisure  and  partial  blind 
ness  to  that  brilliant  period  of  Spain's  history  when  she  was 
extending  her  empire  over  the  new  world.  The  result  was  a 
series  of  able  and  fascinating  works:  Ferdinand  and  Isabella 
(1837),  The  Conquest  of  Mexico  (1843),  and  The  Conquest  of 
Peru  (1847).  The  other  of  the  two,  John  Lothrop  Motley, 
of  Boston,  after  trying  law  and  feeling  his  way  toward 
literature  with  several  novels  (Morton's  Hope,  1839,  and 
Merry  Mount,  1848),  turned  to  history,  and  spent  much 
of  his  life  abroad  in  the  study  of  the  heroic  period  of  the 
Netherlands  in  the  days  of  William  of  Orange.  He  published 
The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic  in  1856.  The  romantic  pict- 
uresqueness  of  the  periods  treated  by  both  these  writers  was 
fairly  equalled  'by  the  grace  and  animation  of  their  style,  and 
they  paralleled  the  triumph  gained  by  Macaulay  in  England, 
of  having  their  works  read  like  so  much  romance.  Schoolboys 
could  turn  from  Irving  and  Cooper  to  Prescott  and  Motley 
with  scarcely  any  loss  of  interest.  Prescott,  however,  was 
somewhat  deficient  in  critical  insight;  and  Motley,  though 
possessed  of  ample  powers  and  exercising  more  restraint  in 
his  style  than  Prescott,  treated  his  theme  so  narrowly  that  he 
was  "really  not  a  historian,  but  a  describer  of  mighty  historic 
deeds."  Thus  it  has  come  about  that  the  supremacy  among 
our  historians,  which  was  first  awarded  to  one  of  these  men 
and  then  to  the  other,  has  been  gradually  transferred  to  a 
successor  of  both. 

Francis  Parkman,  also  a  Boston  and  a  Harvard  man, 
resolved  at  the  early  age  of  eighteen  upon  the  plan  of  the  his 
tory  to  which  he  devoted  his  mature  years.  He  took  an 
American  theme,  the  "Story  of  the  Woods,"  the  tripartite 


190  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

conflict  that  lasted  for  a  century  and  a  half  between  the 
English,  the  French,  and  the  Indians,  on  the  frontiers  of  the 
northern  new  world.     In  pursuit  of  his  purpose  he 
undertook  a  journey  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 


spent  some  time  in  a  village  of  the  Sioux  Indians. 
The  hardships  of  the  trip  so  impaired  his  already  frail  health 
that  his  life-work  was  done  with  weak  and  sometimes  almost 
useless  eyesight,  and  under  painful  nervous  affliction.  But 
he  knew  his  ground  and  his  facts  with  a  minute  specialist's 
knowledge;  he  had  an  intellect  of  philosophic  breadth,  acute- 
ness,  fairness,  and  accuracy;  and  he  was  gifted  with  a  delight 
ful  style.  Nor  was  his  theme  essentially  less  attractive  than 
those  of  his  forerunners,  while  its  nearness  to  the  interests  of 
American  readers  gave  it  an  enhanced  national  value.  His 
first  printed  work,  The  California  and  Oregon  Trail  (1849), 
the  record  of  his  personal  experiences,  is  read  by  boys  as 
eagerly  as  Dana's  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast,  and  is  one  of 
those  real  stories  that  are  almost  better  than  romances.  It 
is  filled  with  the  fragrance  of  woods  and  streams  and  the 
fresh,  free  air  of  the  plains  and  mountains.  Parkman's  series 
of  histories  began  with  the  one  that  is  last  in  historical  order— 
The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac  (1851).  The  publication  of  the 
other  seven  extended  from  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 
World  (1865)  to  A  Half  -Century  of  Conflict  (1892).  It  is  an 
admirable  series,  worthy  of  its  great  theme,  and  it  sets 
Parkman,  by  common  consent,  among  the  historians  of 

genius. 

Besides  the  formal  historians  there  are  certain  other 
workers  in  the  broad  field  of  scholarly  research  and  criticism 
who  might  justly  claim  a  share  of  attention.  There  was 
Professor  Ticknor,  the  first  incumbent  of  the  chair  of  French 
and  Spanish  which  was  founded  at  Harvard  in  1817,  and 
which  was  held  later  by  Longfellow  and  by  Lowell.  His 
important  work  was  a  History  of  Spanish  Literature  (1849), 


LONGFELLOW  191 

which  was  not  only  a  pioneer  in  its  field,  but  was  so  able 
and  sound  that  it  remains  still  a  standard  authority.  There 
Geor  e  was  a^so  Edwin  Percy  Whipple,  a  Boston  lecturer 
and  critic,  who  in  his  books  (Literature  and  Life, 


1791-1871. 

E.P. 

1819 


E.p.whjppie,  1849;  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth,  1869;  etc.), 


made  some  approach  toward  the  kind  of  philo 
sophical  criticism  that  is  now  held  in  highest  esteem. 
Here,  too,  might  be  mentioned  men  like  James  T.  Fields,  the 
veteran  Boston  publisher  and  editor,  and  writer  of  Yester 
days  with  Authors;  George  P.  Marsh,  the  Vermont  philologist; 
and  Richard  Grant  White,  of  New  York,  variously  known  as  a 
Shakespearean  scholar,  a  music  and  art  critic,  and  a  writer  of 
popular  philology.  But,  though  it  would  be  easy  to  name 
many  more,  and  some  much  better  scholars  than  these,  the 
number  of  men  who  have  successfully  combined  sound 
scholarship  with  literary  gifts  is  not  large.  The  leaders 
among  them  were,  of  course,  Longfellow,  Low^ell,  and  Holmes, 
and  to  these  leaders  must  be  accorded  a  treatment  in  pro 
portion  to  their  significance. 

HENRY   WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW,  1807-1882 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  was  born  at  Portland, 
Maine,  February  27,  1807.  The  maternal  line  of  the  Wads- 
Youth  worths  goes  back  to  John  Alden  and  Priscilla 
Mullens,  two  passengers  of  the  Mayflower  who 
have  found  a  quiet  fame  in  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish. 
The  Longfellows  do  not  trace  back  quite  so  far  on  American 
soil,  but  there  was  a  goodly  line  of  them  in  Massachusetts 
and  in  Maine — colonist,  blacksmith,  school  teacher,  judge, 
and  lawyer.  Henry  Wadsworth,  so  named  for  a  maternal 
uncle  who  had  sacrificed  his  life  before  Tripoli  in  the  war  with 
Algiers,  was  the  lawyer's  son.  There  was  no  promise  of 
poetry  in  his  ancestry,  perhaps,  but  some  inspiration  was  to 
be  drawn  from  his  surroundings.  For  the  Portland  of  his 


192  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

birth  was  both  a  beautiful  and  a  busy  town  — a  "Forest 
City"  with  miles  of  sea  beach,  and  a  port  where  merchant 
vessels  from  the  West  Indies  exchanged  sugar  and  rum  for 
the  products  of  the  forests  and  the  fisheries  of  Maine;  and 
these  scenes,  or  the  memory  of  them,  directly  inspired  two 
or  three  of  his  best  poems,  notably  My  Lost  Youth. 

We  are  told  that  he  was  almost  a  model  boy — "true,  high- 
minded,  and  noble;"  "remarkably  solicitous  always  to  do 
right;"  handsome,  too;  "sensitive,  impressionable;  active, 
eager,  impetuous,  often  impatient;  quick-tempered,  but  as 
quickly  appeased;  kind-hearted  and  affectionate,  the  sun 
light  of  the  house."  His  conduct  at  school  was  "very  correct 
and  amiable."  He  read  much,  being  always  studious  and 
thoughtful,  though  never  melancholy.  The  first  book  which 
"fascinated  his  imagination"  was  Irving's  Sketch-Book;  and 
it  would  be  easy  to  point  out  more  than  superficial  resem 
blances  between  Longfellow's  poetry  and  Irving's  prose,  just 
as  there  are  certain  fundamental  characteristics  common  to 
Bryant's  poetry  and  Cooper's  prose.  The  resemblance  goes 
back  to  the  character  of  the  men.  "The  gentle  Longfellow" 
and  "the  gentle  Irving"  we  say  with  equal  readiness,  nor 
forget  that  gentleness  implies  gentility,  inherent  nobleness, 
and  manhood.  Out  of  such  characters  grow  naturally  long 
and  unruffled  lives,  as  out  of  such  a  character  as  Poe's  grows 
almost  inevitably  a  short  and  tragic  one. 

Longfellow's  education  was  obtained  at  the  Portland 
Academy  and  at  Bowdoin  College,  Brunswick,  where  he  had 
for  classmates  several  youths  who  were  afterward  to  become 
famous, — two  in  the  world  of  letters,  J.  S.  C.  Abbott  and 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  He  began  to  write  poetry,  melodious 
little  poems  and  to  contribute  both  verse  and  prose  to  various 
struggling  magazines  while  still  an  undergraduate.  He  was 
graduated  in  1825.  His  father  desired  him  to  study  law;  he 
himself  spoke,  though  not  very  seriously,  of  turning  farmer; 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 
EDWARD    EVERETT 


WILLIAM    HICKLING    PRESCOTT 
FRANCIS    PARKMAN 


LONGFELLOW  193 

but  a  Chair  of  Modern  Languages  was  about  to  be  estab 
lished  at  Bowdoin,  and  the  trustees  proposed  that  the  young 
graduate  of  scholarly  and  literary  tastes  should  fit  himself  for 
it.'  Three  years  were  accordingly  spent  in  delightful  study 
and  travel  in  France,  Spain,  Italy,  and  Germany,  and  the 
foundations  were  laid,  not  only  of  his  scholarship,  but  of  that 
passion  for  the  romantic  scenery  and  lore  of  the  old  world 
which  followed  him,  as  it  followed  Irving,  through  life,  and 
gave  color  and  direction  to  so  much  of  his  work. 

He  returned  in  1829  to  take  the  professorship  at  Bowdoin, 

a  very  young  man  for  so  dignified  a  position.     He  married 

in  1831,  and  though  his  domestic  life  was  sad- 

Professional  . 

dened  by  misfortunes,  the  beauty  of  it  may  be 
judged  from  such  poems  as  Footsteps  of  Angels  and 
The  Children's  Hour.  A  second  residence  in  Europe  prepared 
the  way  for  the  Professorship  of  Romance  Languages  at 
Harvard,  where  he  took  up  his  duties  in  1836.  He  secured 
rooms  at  the  historic  Craigie  House  overlooking  the  Charles 
River, — a  house  in  which  Washington  had  been  quartered  for 
some  months  when  he  came  to  Cambridge  in  1775  to  take 
command  of  the  Continental  forces.  After  his  second 
marriage  (his  first  wife  died  during  his  second  residence  in 
Europe)  the  house  passed  into  his  possession  and  became  his 
permanent  home.  He  was  thenceforth  one  of  the  most 
prominent  members — the  real  centre,  Mr.  Higginson  de 
clares —  of  that  group  of  men,  including  Felton,  Sumner, 
Hawthorne,  Agassiz,  Lowell,  and  Holmes,  t  who  gave  dis 
tinction  to  the  Boston  and  Cambridge  of  earlier  days. 

He  had  already  published,  besides  a  translation  of  a 
French  Grammar  and  some  translations  from  a  Spanish  poet, 
a  Sketch-Book-like  series  of  effusions  which  he  entitled  Outre- 
Mer;  a  Pilgrimage  Beyond  the  Sea  (1833,  1834).  In  1839  he 
published  a  second  and  more  ambitious  prose  work,  Hyperion^ 
in  which  the  experiences  of  his  second  journey  to  Europe  were 


194  NATIONAL  LIFE    AND    CULTURE 

woven  into  a  kind  of  romance.  Inasmuch  as  the  romance 
itself  was  largely  autobiographical,  the  publication  was  in 
rather  questionable  taste.  Besides,  the  book  was  sentimental 
in  tone  and  luxuriant  in  style,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  today  how  it  could  have  been  the 
product  of  a  man  past  thirty.  But  its  translations  and 
criticisms  of  German  literature,  which  was  then  little  known 
in  America,  were  serviceable,  and  it  can  have  done  no  harm 
by  setting  '  'hundreds  of  readers  a-dreaming  of  pleasant 
wanderings  by  the  song-haunted  German  rivers."  Ten  years 
later  he  ventured  to  add  to  his  meagre  list  of  prose  writings 
another  romance,  Kavanagh — a  New  England  tale  somewhat 
in  the  manner  of  Hawthorne  but  with  little  of  Hawthorne's 
charm  of  style  or  spiritual  insight.  Poetry  was  as  clearly 
Longfellow's  proper  medium  as  prose  was  Hawthorne's  or 
Cooper's,  and  to  poetry  the  main  energies  of  his  life  were 
dedicated. 

In  the  same  year  in  which  Hyperion  was  published,  ap 
peared  also  his  first  volume  of  poetry,  Voices  of  the  Night. 
The  Psalm  of  Life  had  been  printed  anonymously 
the  Night,"  the  year  before,  in  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine, 
and  had  been  circulated  so  widely  that  Longfellow 
took  this  means  of  declaring  his  authorship.  The  volume 
contained,  in  addition  to  a  prelude  and  his  translations,  the 
two  collections  of  verse,  of  eight  poems  each,  which  are  now 
printed  in  his  works  under  the  general  titles  of  "Voices  of  the 
Night"  and  "Earlier  Poems."  In  one  way  the  publication 
was  as  remarkable  as  the  publication  of  Tennyson's  early 
volume  in  England  nine  years  before;  for  at  least  six  of  the 
eight  poems  for  which  the  volume  was  named — Hymn  to  the 
Night,  A  Psalm  of  Life,  The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers,  Footsteps 
of  Angels,  Flowers,  Midnight  Mass  for  the  Dying  Year — made 
^their  way  instantly  to  a  popularity  that  has  scarcely  dimin 
ished  in  sixty  years.  This  may  have  been  partly  due  to  the 


LONGFELLOW  195 

dearth  of  good  poetry  in  America;  yet  the  poems  deserved 
their  success,  and  they  were  received  in  England  with  equal 
cordiality.  True,  it  is  easy  to  pick  flaws  in  them.  Critics 
will  continue  to  condemn  the  Psalm  of  Life  for  its  preaching 
tone,  its  incoherent  structure,  its  commonplace  ideas,  its 
trite  phrases,  hazy  figures,  and  borrowed  ornaments.  But 
without  shutting  our  eyes  to  these  defects,  which  really  exist, 
and  without  maintaining  that  the  poem  is  of  any  high  order 
of  greatness,  it  is  still  possible  to  enjoy  it  and  to  understand 
why  it  has  made  such  a  wide  and  deep  impression.  It  is 
sound  at  heart.  So  simple  and  melodious  as  to  sing  itself 
into  the  memory,  it  breathes  at  the  same  time  an  ardent 
courage  and  a  cheerful  faith.  Its  theme  is  life,  and  it  is  alive 
with  Saxon  energy  and  earnestness.  It  seems  as  useless  to 
test  it,  like  a  more  ambitious  poem,  by  the  ordinary  canons 
of  criticism  as  it  would  be  to  test  thus  a  stray  ballad  or  a 
religious  hymn  that  has  fixed  itself  in  the  affections  of  a  whole 
people. 

The  same  is  true  of  most  of  these  early  poems.  One  or 
two  of  them,  perhaps, — the  Prelude,  Hymn  to  the  Night,  Foot 
steps  of  Angels, — are  good  by  the  more  formal  tests.  But  the 
primary  reason  of  their  success  is  plain.  It  lies  in  their 
character — their  simple  and  sincere  feeling  and  their  sufficient 
art.  Longfellow  was  faithfully  following  the  counsel  of  the 
"distant  voices"  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney  heard  three  cen 
turies  ago — 

"Look,  then,  into  thine  heart,  and  write." 

And  in  all  but  range,  this  early  volume  has  remained  fairly 
representative  of  its  author.  It  defined  his  position  as  the 
household  poet,  the  poet  of  the  masses  in  their  better  moods, 
when  the  common  aspirations,  joys,  and  even  sorrows  of 
life,  come  to  them  as  beautiful  things  to  be  treasured  in 
beautiful  words.  Longfellow  exercised  his  powers  in  many 
directions  afterward,  but  he  did  not  climb  much  higher. 


196  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

The  next  book  of  verse,  the  Ballads  and  Other  Poems  of 
1841,  shows  one  of  the  new  directions  his  activity  took.     He 

Ballads          was  to  ^e  tne  sm£er  °f  men  and  deeds  as  well  as  of 
musings    and    exhortations.      The    earlier    tones 
reappear  in  such  a  poem  as  Endymion,  with  its  oft-quoted 
lines — 

"No  one  is  so  accursed  by  fate, 
No  one  so  utterly  desolate, 

But  some  heart,  though  unknown, 
Responds  unto  his  own" — 

and  in  the  even  more  familiar  Rainy  Day,  Maidenhood,  and 
Excelsior;  the  new  note  is  to  be  found  particularly  in  The  Vil 
lage  Blacksmith,  like  Burns 's  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  an  ex 
altation  of  humble  toil  and  reward,  and  in  the  two  stirring 
ballads  of  The  Skeleton  in  Armor  and  The  Wreck  of  the  Hes 
perus.  The  difference  in  manner  is  as  marked  as  the  differ 
ence  in  substance : — 

"And  as  to  catch  the  gale 
Round  veered  the  flapping  sail, 
Death!  was  the  helmsman's  hail, 

Death  without  quarter! 
Midships  with  iron  keel 
Struck  we  her  ribs  of  steel; 
Down  her  black  hulk  did  reel 

Through  the  black  water!" 

Here  is  the  metre  of  Drayton's  Agincourt,  throbbing  still  with 
the  old  martial  passion  and  not  greatly  excelled  by  Tennyson 
himself  in  the  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade.  That  Longfellow 
should  have  shown  himself  such  a  good  ballad  writer  was 
scarcely  to  be  expected  when  we  consider  the  gentleness  of 
his  nature  and  the  even  niceness  of  his  technique.  In  fact, 
he  was  not  often  successful  in  work  that  demanded  intensity 
of  feeling.  His  Poems  on  Slavery  (1842)  were  merely  pretty 
and  polished  when,  to  produce  any  effect  worth  producing, 
they  should  have  been  strong  even  to  ruggedness.  But  let 


LONGFELLOW  197 

him  be  given  a  story  to  tell  and  he  could  tell  it  with  both 
grace  and  vigor. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  follow  in  detail  the  long  list  of  vol 
umes  and  separate  poems  which  came  from  his  pen  in  rapid 
succession,  many  of  which  have  become  household  names. 
There  were  a  few  relative  failures.  The  Spanish  Student 
(1842)  showed  the  versatile  author  in  the  role  of  dramatist. 
But  American  writers  seemed  still  unequal  to  the  feat  of 
writing  successful  drama;  and  this  play  of  Longfellow's, 
while  it  contains  pretty  lyrics  and  makes  entertaining  read 
ing,  has  little  dramatic  power  and  has  never  been  staged. 
However,  the  poet's  experiments  continued,  and  in  general 
met  with  wide  success.  The  dreamily  beautiful  and  pathetic 

idyl,  Evangeline,  appeared  in  1847  and  imme- 
Hnef'Ml^?.  diately  won  its  way  to  the  hearts  of  a  hundred 

thousand  readers.  A  few  critics  quarrelled  with 
the  hexameter  lines  because  they  were  not  classical  hex 
ameters,  but  their  objections  were  unheeded.  The  tale  of 
Acadie,  of  "the  forest  primeval"  and 

"the  hearts  that  beneath  it 

Leaped  like  the  roe  when  he  hears  in  the  woodland  the 
voice  of  the  huntsman," 

a  tale  not  dark  enough  to  suit  the  fancy  of  Hawthorne,  to 
whom  it  was  first  told  by  a  friend  of  both  writers,  rightly 
seemed  to  Longfellow  to  have  in  it  precisely  those  human  ele 
ments  of  faith  and  devotion  that  make  the  widest  appeal.  He 
accordingly  took  the  story  and  retold  it  with  picturesque 
accessories  of  landscape  and  fireside  and  with  a  musical  flow 
of  syllables  that  leave  it  little  inferior  to  its  great  model, 
Goethe's  Hermann  und  Dorothea.  It  is  something  more,  too, 
than  a  piece  of  literature.  One  feels  that  there  is  always 
hope  for  humanity  so  long  as  a  great  wrong  like  that  done 
to  the  innocent  peasants  of  Acadie  can  inspire  such  a  noble 
protest  as  underlies  the  simple  tale  of  Evangeline. 


198  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

The  collection  of  poems  entitled  The  Seaside  and  the  Fire 
side,  which  appeared  in  1850,  contained,  besides  Resignation 
and  other  domestic  and  popular  pieces,  the  poem  of  deep 
patriotic  feeling,  the  allegory  of  The  Building  of  the  Ship. 
The  lines  of  its  closing  apostrophe  to  the  ship  of  state  are 
known  to  have  brought  tears  of  emotion  to  the  eyes  of  Lin 
coln  during  the  anxious  hours  of  his  own  pilotage : — 

"Thou,  too,  sail  on,  O  Ship  of  State! 
Sail  on,  O  Union,  strong  and  great!     . 
Sail  on,  nor  fear  to  breast  the  sea! 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  are  all  with  thee, 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  our  prayers,  our  tears, 
Our  faith  triumphant  o'er  our  fears, 
Are  all  with  thee, — are  all  with  thee!" 

Five  years  later  came  another  long  poem,  this  time  almost 
epic  in  character  and  scope.  Longfellow  was  so  much  a  lit 
erary  craftsman  that  the  critic  of  his  work  is  con- 
i855awatha'"  stantly  tempted  to  put  its  form  foremost,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  sometimes  selected 
the  form  before  the  theme.  In  point  of  form  The  Song  of 
Hiawatha  was  an  even  bolder  experiment  than  Evangeline. 
The  metre  chosen  was  that  of  the  Finnish  Kalevala,  a  poem 
then  almost  totally  unknown  to  American  readers.  The 
measure  is  characterized  by  a  trochaic  beat,  and  by  short 
(octosyllabic)  unrhymed  lines,  constantly  pausing,  and  over 
lapping  by  repetition  of  phrases,  so  that  the  narrative  pro 
gresses  slowly.  It  is  peculiarly  suited  to  the  tales  of  a  primi 
tive  people,  being  well  adapted  to  memorizing,  and  gratifying 
to  the  sense  of  rhythm  so  strong  in  children  and  the  untu 
tored.  That  Longfellow  had  again  chosen  wisely  was  shown 
by  his  success.  The  noblest  and  most  picturesque  traditions 
of  the  American  Indians  were  woven  into  a  connected  story, 
whose  charm  was  greatly  heightened  by  the  novel  melody  of 
the  verse.  The  very  names  were  as  notes  of  music  "from 


LONGFELLOW  199 

the   lips   of  Nawadaha,   the   musician,   the   sweet   singer." 

"In  the  vale  of  Tawasentha, 
In  the  green  and  silent  valley, 
There  he  sang  of  Hiawatha, 
Sang  the  Song  of  Hiawatha, 
Sang  his  wondrous  birth  and  being, 
How  he  prayed  and  how  he  fasted, 
How  he  lived,  and  toiled,  and  suffered. 
That  the  tribes  of  men  might  prosper, 
That  he  might  advance  his  people!" 

It  was  not  long  before  the  tales  of  Hiawatha's  Fasting,  of  his 
Wooing,  of  Blessing  the  Cornfields,  of  The  Ghosts  and  The 
Famine,  were  known  practically  wherever  English  poetry  is 
read. 

It  is  wrong  to  claim  for  Hiawatha  any  special  significance 
as  a  poem  with  a  native  American  theme,  sprung  from  the 
soil.  Longfellow  sang,  in  a  purely  literary  and  romantic 
spirit,  the  traditions  of  a  race  that  was  to  him  alien  and  almost 
unknown,  as  an  Englishman  might  turn  into  poetry  the  leg 
ends  of  the  aborigines  of  Australia.  He  idealized,  too,  far 
more  than  Cooper,  and  beyond  all  warrant.  Local  color  and 
local  truth  are  not  the  strong  points  of  the  poem.  It  must 
be  accepted  solely  for  the  admirable  work  of  art  that  is  it.  A 
more  strictly  native  theme  was  that  of  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,  \vhich  followed  in  three  years;  but  the  homely 
Puritan  tale,  with  its  repetition  of  the  manner  of  Evangeline, 
did  not  afford  the  poet  quite  the  right  inspiration,  and  it 
frequently  lapses  into  mere  prose. 

In  1854,  the  year  before  the  publication  of  Hiawatha, 

Longfellow  resigned  his  professorship  at  Harvard  that  he 

might  be  free  to  pursue  his  more  congenial,  and 

Later  Years. 

by  that  time  more  profitable,  literary  work.  In 
1861  the  happiness  of  his  home  life  was  broken  by  a  calami 
tous  accident.  Mrs.  Longfellow,  while  engaged  in  sealing  up 
for  her  little  daughters  some  packages  containing  curls  of  their 


200  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

hair,  set  fire  to  her  dress  and  was  fatally  burned.  The 
of  Snow,  a  sonnet  written  eighteen  years  afterward,  gives  us 
some  hint  of  what  Longfellow  must  have  suffered.  In  the  un 
rest  that  followed  this  domestic  affliction,  further  fed  by  the 
anxieties  of  the  Civil  War,  the  poet  turned  for  solace  to  the 
semi-mechanical  exercise  of  writing  tales  and  making  transla 
tions.  The  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn  (the  inn  really  existed  in 
the  town  of  Sudbury,  and  the  characters  introduced  were 
actual  friends  of  Longfellow,  in  slight  disguise)  appeared  in 
1863.  Seven  years  later  he  had  completed  and  published  a 
work  worthy  at  once  of  his  scholarship  and  his  genius, — a 
metrical  yet  extremely  literal  translation  of  Dante's  Divina 
Commedia.  It  fails,  as  perhaps  all  translations  must  fail,  to 
catch  the  burning  intensity  of  the  original,  but  all  in  all  it  is 
the  most  satisfactory  verse  rendering  we  have  in  English  of  a 
poem  for  which  nothing  but  an  absolutely  literal  translation 
will  ever  suffice.  About  the  same  time,  too,  he  completed 
what  he  hoped  would  be  his  masterwork,  the  conception  of 
which  had  in  a  sense  "dominated  his  literary  life,"  namely,  a 
trilogy  which  aimed  to  set  forth  Christianity  in  its  ancient, 
mediaeval,  and  modern  aspects,  and  which  he  entitled 
Christus:  a  Mystery.  But  the  task  was  beyond  his  powers. 
The  middle  portion,  "The  Golden  Legend,"  which  had  been 
published  twenty  years  before,  was  fairly  successful,  but  the 
other  parts,  "The  Divine  Tragedy"  and  "The  New  England 
Tragedies,"  are  so  little  read  that  they  are  not  always 
incorporated  in  his  collected  works. 

After  this  Longfellow  attempted  no  more  poems  of  large 
scope,  though  he  continued  to  write  many  sonnets  and  minor 
pieces,  from  The  Hanging  of  the  Crane  and  Morituri  Salutamus 
down  to  that  lyric  of  serene  faith,  The  Bells  of  San  Bias,  writ 
ten  but  a  few  days  before  his  death.  He  died  on  the  twenty- 
fourth  of  March,  1882,  aged  seventy-five.  In  1884,  a  bust  of 
him  was  placed  in  the  Poets'  Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey, 


LONGFELLOW  201 

near  the  tomb  of  Chaucer, — England's  gracious  tribute  to 
the  renown  of  America's  best  loved  poet. 

The  parallel  between  Longfellow  and  Irving,  which  has 
already  been  suggested,  can  be  drawn  further.  Longfellow, 
like  Irving  kept  pretty  carefully  to  the  beaten  track  where  all 

could  follow  him.     In  the  matter  of  form  he  knew 
Summary.      weU  enough  how  to  surprise  his  public,  and  he  did  so 

again  and  again;  but  even  these  seeming  novelties 
always  turned  out  to  be  something  old  and  approved. 
He  preferred  simple  themes  and  simple  language,  refraining 
from  any  innovations  that  might  repel.  Thus  he  established 
himself  securely  in  his  readers'  affections,  always  meeting 
their  expectations  and  making  his  name  in  a  sense  synony 
mous  with  American  poetry, — though  not  our  greatest  yet 
our  leading  singer  by  virtue  of  his  continuous,  satisfying  song. 
The  supreme  poetic  gift,  imaginative  insight,  was  not  his 
in  any  marked  degree.  Much  broader  than  Bryant,  his  con 
templations  did  not  run  so  deep.  Herein,  too,  he  falls  far  be 
low  his  English  contemporary,  Tennyson,  of  whom  he  was  in 
some  other  respects  so  nearly  the  peer.  He  had  no  large 
visions,  whether  of  the  political  destiny  of  America  or  of  the 
moral  and  social  destiny  of  man.  He  had  little  compre 
hension  of  the  forces  that  were  working  such  a  change  in  his 
own  generation — the  ideas  of  liberty  and  equality,  the  new 
science,  and  the  new  education,  that  were  rapidly  emanci 
pating  both  body  and  mind.  Farther  yet  from  him  was  it  to 
see  the  images  of  beauty  or  terror  which  Poe  saw  beyond  the 
veil  of  life.  He  had  no  power  of  con  jury  over  the  spirit 
world.  Now  and  then  he  touched  the  heights,  as  in  the  vision 
of  the  majestic  Hymn  to  the  Night: — 

"I  heard  the  trailing  garments  of  the  Night 

Sweep  through  her  marble  halls! 
I  saw  her  sable  skirts  all  fringed  with  light 
From  the  celestial  walls!" — 


202  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

or  in  the  figure  inspired  by  the  gun-barrels  in  the  arsenal  at 
Springfield  ranged  and  shining  like  the  pipes  of  an  organ: — 

"Ah!  what  a  sound  will  rise,  how  wild  and  dreary, 
When  the  death-angel  touches  those  swift  keys!" 

But  these  things  are  too  infrequent  to  be  considered  charac 
teristic:  we  do  not  recognize  them  as  like  Longfellow.  He 
was  something  more  than  a  poet  of  fancy,  but  in  the  fields  of 
the  imagination  his  range  was  in  the  lowlands. 

His  faculty  is  best  described  as  one  that  was  mainly 
receptive  and  assimilative.  He  had  a  true  instinct  for  beauty, 
and  he  showed  his  appreciation  of  any  beauty  in  another's 
work  by  frankly  borrowing  it  for  his  own.  He  never  dis 
graced  it;  usually,  unless  it  came  from  a  very  high  source,  he 
bettered  it  in  the  borrowing.  If  this  was  not  genius,  it  was  a 
talent  for  detecting  and  advertising  genius,  for  turning  to 
the  best  account  the  best  that  the  world's  literature  could 
afford.  For  example,  Tennyson  published  Locksley  Hall,  and 
immediately  afterward  Longfellow  composed  The  Belfry  of 
Bruges  in  the  same  metre  and  with  something  of  the  same 
phrasing.  This  practice,  which  came  from  his  habit  of  com 
posing  in  his  study  and  relying  on  his  books  for  inspiration, 
naturally  brought  upon  him  charges  of  imitating.  Wide 
readers  and  critics,  like  Poe,  knew  the  sources,  and,  as  they 
read  his  poems,  could  not  help  being  reminded  of  them.  The 
nature  of  the  imitation  may  be  learned  by  comparing  The 
Building  of  the  Ship  or  Keramos  with  Schiller's  Song  of  the 
Bell,  or,  for  a  minor  instance,  The  Slave  in  the  Dismal  Swamp 
with  Moore's  Ballad,  "They  made  her  a  grave,  too  cold  and 
damp."  But  Longfellow  never  answered  the  charges,  both 
because  they  were  in  part  true  and  because,  as  far  as  they 
were  true,  there  was  nothing  in  them  to  cause  him  shame.  He 
was  acting  honorably;  even  when  the  imitation  was  most 
obvious  he  added  enough  of  his  own  to  justify  him,  and 


LONGFELLOW  203 

all  right-minded  readers  were  grateful  to  him  for  exercising 
his  faculty  so  happily.  Besides,  any  doubt  of  his  being  a  poet 
in  his  own  right  could  always  be  allayed  by  turning  to  such 
songs  of  genuine,  spontaneous  utterance  as  The  Bridge,  or  The 
Day  is  Done,  or  My  Lost  Youth. 

His  versatility  was  greater  than  that  of  any  other  American 
poet.  Though  most  at  ease  in  lyric  poetry,  he  essayed  also, 
as  we  have  seen,  both  epic  and  dramatic,  with  the  minor 
varieties  of  ballad  and  pastoral.  As  a  story-teller  in  verse  he 
belongs  to  that  band  of  English  rhymers  led  by  Chaucer  and 
Scott.  He  was  almost  as  thorough  a  romanticist,  too,  as 
Scott — steeped  in  medievalism  and  Germanism.  In  form, 
his  range  was  as  wide  as  in  substance.  He  tried  all  forms,  and 
seemed  to  master  one  as  easily  as  another,  with  the  single 
exception  of  heroic  blank  verse,  which  was  too  stately  for  his 
agile  Muse.  But  the  mastership,  which  in  blank  verse  he  has 
to  yield  to  Bryant,  he  holds  in  an  equally  difficult  form.  As 
a  sonnet  waiter  he  has  had  no  rival  in  America.  Indeed,  one 
might  support  the  assertion  that  Longfellow  wrote  no  greater 
poetry  than  is  to  be  found  in  some  of  his  sonnets,  as  the 
Divina  Commedia  series,  Three  Friends  of  Mine,  Milton,  or 
Nature. 

Through  these  things — his  simplicity,  his  breadth,  his 
receptive  faculty,  his  versatility — Longfellow  became  our 
great  teacher  in  verse.  He  was  a  scholar  himself,  to  begin 
with, — one  of  America's  earliest  and  best.  He  was  the  first 
person  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  to  write  upon  Anglo- 
Saxon.  He  led  many  a  student  to  a  knowledge  of  the  modern 
languages  and  literatures,  and  by  his  translations  and 
adaptations  spread  far  and  wide  their  benignant  influence. 
But  most  of  all  he  assisted  in  the  spread  of  culture  through  the 
subtle  influence  of  his  art.  He  was  an  artist  to  the  finger 
tips.  In  this  respect  he  far  outran  Bryant  and  was  a  revel 
ation  to  a  Puritan  world.  And  mark  how  he  reached  that 


204  NATIONAL   LIFE    AND    CULTURE 

world.  Poe  could  not  do  it,  for  pure  art  and  imagination 
would  not  avail.  But  Longfellow,  though  there  were  no 
theologians  among  his  ancestors,  had  the  strong  moral  bias 
of  his  New  England  environment;  like  Bryant,  though  in 
less  degree,  he  was  given  to  meditating  and  moralizing;  and 
all  the  while  his  readers,  who  went  to  him  for  counsel  and 
cheer,  were  unconsciously  succumbing  to  the  witcheries  of 
song  and  learning  to  like  the  very  things  they  had  been 
taught  to  fear  or  despise.  It  was  but  another  step  to  the 
drama,  to  music,  to  painting  and  sculpture.  Thus  it  be 
came  Longfellow's  mission  to  soften  the  asperities  of  a  narrow 
creed  and  life.  Perhaps  the  slight  sentimentalism  that  clings 
to  his  work,  as  to  Irving's,  was  a  necessary  part  of  this  disci 
plinary  task.  We  can  pardon  his  fondness  for  exclamation 
points  and  pretty  figures  of  speech  when  we  contemplate  the 
large  result.  Nor  if,  after  we  have  learned  to  like  such  things 
as  "footprints  on  the  sands  of  time"  and  "forget-me-nots  of 
the  angels,"  we  find  that  our  poetic  education  is  not  complete 
until  Tennyson  and  Shakespeare  and  Dante  have  taught  us 
to  dislike  them  again,  should  we  turn  with  ingratitude  from 
our  first  teacher,  who  made  the  second  lesson  possible. 

Finally,  and  once  more  like  Irving,  Longfellow  has  a  high 
claim  to  our  admiration  in  his  fundamental,  serene  humanity. 
Scholarly  though  he  was,  bookish  and  often  getting  his  inspir 
ation  at  second  hand,  he  was  never  scholastic,  technical, 
obscure,  or  dry.  Love  is  more  than  wisdom,  and  in  every 
line  that  Longfellow  wrote  there  beats  a  kindly  human  heart. 
Rarely  does  he  count  to  us  intellectually  so  much  as  emotion 
ally.  He  fought  shy  of  analysis,  put  quietly  by  the  problems 
and  stress  of  his  age,  if  indeed  he  felt  them,  remaining  to  the 
end  an  ardent  lover  of  beauty  and  peace;  and  over  all  his 
poetry  broods 

"  A  Sabbath  sound,  as  of  doves 
In  quiet  neighborhoods." 


WHITTIER  205 

JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER,   1807-1892 

Another  poet  in  whom  love  of  human  nature  was  a  marked 
trait  was  born  north  of  Boston  in  the  same  year  as  Long 
fellow — John  Greenleaf  Whittier.     Little  of  the 
Boy?r"  scholar,  however,  is  to  be  found  in  this  New  Eng 

land  Quaker,  whose  lot  it  was  to  pass  from  the 
plow  to  politics  and  from  politics  to  literature.  He  was  born 
in  1807  in  East  Haverhill,  a  rugged,  hilly  section  of  Essex 
County,  in  the  extreme  north-east  corner  of  Massachusetts. 
In  the  southern  part  of  the  same  county  lies  Salem,  the  birth 
place  of  Hawthorne.  The  home  of  Whittier  was  in  a  country 
district;  the  town  of  Haverhill  was  three  miles  away,  and  to 
this  day  no  roof  is  in  sight  from  the  old  homestead.  The 
house,  considerably  more  than  a  hundred  years  old  at  the 
poet's  birth,  was  built  by  his  great-great-grandfather.  The 
Whittiers  were  mostly  stalwart  men,  six  feet  in  height,  who 
lived  out  their  three-score  and  ten  years.  The  poet,  though 
his  years  were  more  than  any  of  his  immediate  ancestors',  fell 
a  little  short  of  the  family  stature  and  was  of  slender  frame. 
He  attributed  his  delicate  health  to  the  hard  work  and 
exposure  of  his  youth.  He  milked  cows,  "grubbed  stumps," 
built  boulder  fences,  threshed  grain  with  a  flail,  wore  no  flan 
nels  in  the  coldest  weather,  and  woke  often  of  winter  morn 
ings  to  find  upon  his  coverlet  sif tings  of  snow.  Something  of 
this  may  be  learned  from  Snow-Bound,  which  is  a  faithful 
picture  of  the  Whittier  homestead  and  household  as  they  were 
ninety  years  ago. 

It  was  a  life  utterly  without  luxury  and  with  few  means  of 
culture.  The  family,  however,  was  one  of  the  most  respected 
in  the  community,  and  could  draw  to  its  fireside  intelligent 
acquaintances,  among  them  itinerant  ministers  of  the  Friends 
to  which  sect  it  belonged.  There  were  perhaps  thirty  books 
in  the  house,  largely  Quaker  tracts  and  journals.  Of  course, 
there  was  the  Bible,  and  through  all  his  poetry  Whittier 


206  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

reverts  to  the  Bible  for  phrases  and  images  as  naturally  as 
Keats  reverts  to  classical  mythology  or  Longfellow  to  med 
iaeval  legend.  Memorable  were  the  evenings  when  the 
school-teacher  came  and  read  to  the  family  from  books  he 
brought  with  him — one  most  memorable  when  the  book  was  a 
copy  of  Burns.  On  Whittier's  first  visit  to  Boston,  an  occa 
sion  honored  by  his  wearing  "boughten  buttons"  on  his 
homespun  coat  and  a  broad-brim  hat  made  by  his  aunt  out 
of  pasteboard  covered  with  drab  velvet,  he  purchased  a  copy 
of  Shakespeare.  One  of  the  Waverley  novels,  its  author  as 
yet  unknown,  fell  into  his  hands  and  was  read  eagerly,— 
but  the  parents  did  not  share  in  that  reading. 

He  attended  the  district  school  a  few  weeks  each  winter; 
the  nature  of  his  schooling  may  be  judged  from  the  poem 
From  To  My  Old  Schoolmaster.  When  he  was  nineteen 

joumluLn  he  completed  his  scanty  education  with  a  year  at 
and  Politics.  an  aca(jemy  in  Haverhill.  From  the  time  when 
the  reading  of  Burns  woke  the  poet  within  him,  he  was  con 
stantly  writing  rhymes,  covering  his  slate  with  them  and 
sometimes  copying  them  out  on  foolscap.  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  soon  afterward  to  be  the  leader  of  the  abolition 
movement,  had  started  his  Free  Press  in  a  neighboring  town. 
Whittier*s  father,  interested  in  all  philanthropic  enterprises, 
was  a  subscriber,  and  to  it  Whittier's  sister  sent,  without  his 
knowledge,  one  of  his  poems.  Thus  began  at  once  his  literary 
and  his  political  career.  Garrison  became  interested  in  his 
new  contributor,  and  the  story  has  often  been  told  of  how 
the  smart  young  editor  drove  out  to  the  country  home  and 
Whittier  was  called  in  from  the  field  to  meet  him.  It  is  not 
quite  a  parallel  to  the  story  of  Cincinnatus,  but  important 
things  came  of  the  meeting.  Through  the  long  anti-slavery 
agitation  that  followed,  Garrison  and  he  were  close  friends, 
often  working  side  by  side.  Two  years  after  the  meeting, 
Garrison,  who  was  then  editing  a  temperance  paper  in  Boston, 


WHITTIER  207 

secured  for  him  the  editorship  of  a  political  journal  there  and 
he  was  soon  in  the  thick  of  the  tariff  discussion,  supporting 
Clay  against  Jackson  in  the  campaign  of  1832.  He  wrote 
in  one  of  his  letters,  "I  would  rather  have  the  memory  of  a 
Howard,  a  Wilberforce,  and  a  Clarkson  than  the  undying 
fame  of  Byron;"  and  though  he  was  thinking  of  Byron's 
spirit  rather  than  of  his  poetry,  the  declaration  shows  clearly 
that  his  interests  lay  less  in  literature  than  in  political  and 
social  reform. 

The  editorial  work  begun  at  Boston  was  continued  at 

Hartford,  but  proved  too  trying  for  his  delicate  health,  and  he 

returned  to  the  farm.     When  the  farm  was  sold 

Enlisted 

against          four  years  later,  he  removed  with  his  mother  and 

Slavery. 

sister  to  Amesbury.  Meanwhile,  he  contributed 
much  verse  to  the  newspapers.  But  his  interest  in  politics 
more  and  more  overshadowed  his  other  interests.  "I  have 
knocked  Pegasus  on  the  head,"  he  wrote,  "as  a  tanner  does 
his  bark-mill  donkey  when  he  is  past  service."  He  was 
elected  to  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  and  there  were 
excellent  prospects  of  his  being  nominated  for  Congress.  The 
anti-slavery  agitation,  however,  was  growing,  fostered 
especially  by  Garrison's  Liberator  which  was  started  in  1831, 
and  as  Whittier  was  soon  seen  to  be  an  ardent  supporter  of 
the  unpopular  cause,  his  political  prospects  faded.  No  selfish 
considerations  could  prevent  a  man  of  his  character  from 
speaking  out  when  he  felt  that  the  nation  was  guilty  of  har 
boring  a  great  wrong.  Quaker  though  he  was,  the  righting 
spirit  was  strong  in  him.  It  could  be  read  in  his  piercing, 
deep-set  eyes,  and  it  can  be  read  in  his  verse.  During  his 
school  days  he  had  published  anonymously  a  poem  called 
The  Song  of  the  Vermonters,  1779:— 

"Ho — all  to  the  borders!     Vermonters,  come  down, 
With  your  breeches  of  deerskin  and  jackets  of  brown; 
With  your  red  woolen  caps,  and  your  moccasins,  come, 
To  the  gathering  summons  of  trumpet  and  drum," 


208  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

He  disliked  to  acknowledge  the  authorship  of  so  martial  a 
poem,  perhaps  because  he  realized  that  the  spirit  of  it  was 
only  too  geniune. 

He  flung  himself  into  the  new  cause,  heart  and  soul.  He 
could  not  counsel  taking  up  arms;  actual  war,  indeed,  was  a 
thing  he  dreaded.  "For  one,  I  thank  God  that  he  has  given 
me  a  deep  and  invincible  horror  of  human  butchery."  But  all 
means  short  of  war  were  to  be  tried.  Both  openly  and  pri 
vately  he  helped  with  advice  some  of  the  great  leaders  of  the 
North — Sumner,  Seward,  Gerrit  Smith.  Occasionally  he 
took  part  in  public  meetings.  In  1837  he  went  to  Philadel 
phia  to  edit  the  Pennsylvania  Freeman,  and  was  .there  when 
Pennsylvania  Hall  was  burnt  by  a  mob  in  protest  against  an 
anti-slavery  convention.  He  was  once  pelted  with  eggs  in 
the  streets  of  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  and  thirty  years 
afterward  sent  the  coat  which  he  had  then  worn,  and  which 
had  been  kept  as  a  relic,  to  the  needy  freedmen  of  the  South. 
But  most  of  all  he  assisted  the  cause  with  his  poetry,  to  which 
he  turned  once  more  with  the  inspiration  born  of  a  noble 
purpose.  ^The  bark-mill  donkey  was  transformed  into  a 
knight's  charger,  and  not  even  the  rider  himself  ever  sneered 
at  it  again. 

Here  was  the  real  beginning  of  his  career.  Such  poems  as 
he  had  already  published — Moll  Pitcher,  a  poem  of  New  Eng 
land  legendary  life  (1832),  and  the  more  ambitious 
JfFretdom.te  Mogg  Megone  (1836)— were  only  conventional  and 
almost  worthless  exercises  in  rhyme.  It  was  the 
Ballads  and  the  Anti-Slavery  Poems  of  1837  and  1838  that  won 
him  a  hearing  and  marked  him  as  a  poet  with  a  mission — the 
accepted  laureate  of  the  Liberty  party.  Among  the  best  of 
these  poems  were  Toussaint  L'Ouverture,  The  Slave-Ships, 
Expostulation,  The  Hunters  of  Men,  Stanzas  for  the  Times, 
Farewell  of  a  Virginia  Slave  Mother,  The  Pastoral  Letter.  The 
last  named  was  called  forth  by  a  letter  written  by  the  Con- 


HENRY   WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW      OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 
JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL          JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER 


WHITTIER  209 

gregational  ministers  of  Massachusetts  in  which  they  pleaded 
that  the  perplexed  subject  of  abolition  be  not  brought  up  for 
debate  in  the  churches.  Whit  tier's  poem  was  a  scathing 
rebuke  of  what  he  conceived  to  be  most  unchristian  conduct : 

"For,  if  ye  claim  the  'pastoral  right' 

To  silence  Freedom's  voice  of  warning, 
And  from  your  precincts  shut  the  light 
Of  Freedom's  day  around  you  dawning; 

"If  when  an  earthquake  voice  of  power 

And  signs  in  heaven  and  earth  are  showing 
That  forth,  in  its  appointed  hour, 

The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  going! 
And,  with  that  Spirit,  Freedom's  light 

On  kindred,  tongue,  and  people  breaking, 
Whose  slumbering  millions,  at  the  sight, 

In  glory  and  in  strength  are  waking! 

"  What  marvel,  if  the  people  learn 

To  claim  the  right  of  free  opinion? 
What  marvel,  if  at  times  they  spurn 

The  ancient  yoke  of  your  dominion?" 

No  stronger  or  clearer  voice  for  freedom  had  been  raised  in 
American  letters  since  Tom  Paine  nerved  the  soldiers  at  Val 
ley  Forge  and  Philip  Freneau  hurled  his  hot  verses  at  the 
head  of  George  the  Third. 

After  1844  Whittier  gave  up  editorial  duties  altogether 
and  became  an  established  literary  worker  in  the  quiet  of  his 
Amesbury  home.  In  1847  he  began  to  contribute  regularly 
to  the  National  Era,  a  weekly  organ  of  the  Anti-Slavery 
Society  established  at  Washington,  the  paper,  it  may  be 
remembered,  in  which  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  first 
appeared.  Through  this  medium  many  of  his  better  poems 
were  published:  Barclay  of  Ury,  Angels  of  Buena  Vista,  Maud 
Mutter,  Bums,  Mary  Garvin,  Ichabod — the  meaning  of  the 
Hebrew  name  is  "departed  glory" — shows  well  the  intensity 


210  NATIONAL  LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

of  the  passions  aroused  by  the  burning  controversies  of  the 
time.  The  poem  was  published  in  1850  shortly  after 
Webster's  Seventh  of  March  Speech  in  support  of  Clay's 
compromise  measures  and  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law.  In  it 
the  great  leader  was  mourned  as  one  already  dead,  since  his 
weakness  in  that  supreme  moment  Whittier  could  not  but 
regard  as  dishonor  and  moral  death.  At  such  a  time,  he 
said,  "If  one  spoke  at  all,  he  could  only  speak  in  tones  of 
stern  and  sorrowful  rebuke."  Out  of  the  war  and  its  issues 
grew  other  strong  poems,  like  the  hymn  Thy  Will  Be  Done,  or 
the  ballad  of  Barbara  Frietchie,  or  the  fervent  and  ecstatic 
Lous  Deo  that  burst  from  him  when  the  bells  rang  out  for  the 
passing  of  the  constitutional  amendment  which  abolished 

slavery  and  made 

"the  cruel  rod  of  war 
Blossom  white  with  righteous  law." 

But  the  voice  that  had  grown  to  such  strength  and  clarity 
in  the  cause  of  liberty  was  returning  again  and  again  to 

the  more  purely  lyrical  notes  it  had  essayed  in 
Bl!iearddsary  youth.  Two  things  always  appealed  strongly  to 

Whittier's  poetic  imagination.  One  was  the 
slender  body  of  legendary  lore  that  has  come  down  from  the 
colonial  days  of  New  England,  including  a  few  tales  of  the 
trials  and  persecutions  of  the  early  Quakers.  The  Bridal  of 
Pennacook,  Mary  Garvin,  The  Ranger,  Mabel  Martin,  Mar 
guerite,  Cassandra  Southwick,  Barclay  of  Ury,  Skipper 
Ireson's  Ride  and  How  the  Women  Went  from  Dover  are  all 
ballads  that  have  been  thus  inspired.  They  show  a  wide 
range.  There  is  the  rude,  saga-like  vigor  of  Barclay  of  Ury 
(a  tale,  however,  not  of  New  England,  but  of  the  Scotch 
Quakers) ;  and  there  is  the  homely  picturesqueness  of 

"Old  Flud  Oirson,  fur  his  horrd  horrt, 
Torr'd  an'  futherr'd  an'  corr'd  in  a  corrt 
By  the  women  o'  Marble 'ead." 


WHITTIER  211 

Mary  Garvin  and  Mabel  Martin  touch  tender  chords  of  sym 
pathy.  Marguerite  is  as  pathetic  as  any  poem  in  our  litera 
ture,  and  The  Ranger  is  almost  as  melodious  as  any. 

The  other  favorite  field  of  Whittier's  imaginative  exercise 
was  the  humble  rural  life  in  which  his  private  interests  were 

earliest  centred.  Lays  of  My  Home,  Songs  of 
idylEn8land  Labor,  Home  Ballads,  were  the  titles  of  some  of  his 

successive  volumes.  He  had  himself  learned  the 
shoemaker's  craft,  he  had  driven  cattle,  he  had  worked  in  the 
cornfields,  and  he  turned  into  brave-hearted  song  the  duties 
and  joys  of  the  shoemakers,  the  drovers,  and  the  huskers. 
He  stands  almost  as  a  patron  saint  to  that  little  man,  the 
"barefoot  boy  with  cheek  of  tan."  He  felt,  with  the  poor 
voter  on  election  day,  the  full  meaning  of  republican  equality : 

"Up!  clouted  knee  and  ragged  coat! 
A  man's  a  man  today!" 

If  it  was  Robert  Burns  who  woke  the  poet  within  him,  it  was 
because  his  heart  beat  with  kindred  sympathies  and  ideals, 
and  the  question  which  he  asks  when  writing  of  Burns, — 

"Who  sweetened  toil  like  him,  or  paid 
To  love  a  tribute  dearer?" — 

might  almost  be  answered  with  his  own  name.  Doubtless, 
in  the  consideration  of  work  of  this  nature,  one  is  too  easily 
beguiled  into  praise  and  needs  to  remind  himself  of  Matthew 
Arnold's  protest  against  the  immoderate  estimation  of  Burns. 
But  the  critic  might  well  forego  his  office  for  a  moment  in  the 
presence  of  these  idyls  of  Whittier,  in  which  the  simple  but 
universal  emotions  of  the  natural  man  find  such  simple  and 
natural  expression.  Surely  it  seems  that  the  lingering  mem 
ory  of  youth's  shy  romance  could  call  forth  no  more  ten 
derly  wistful  cry  than  My  Playmate,  or  that  time  can  never 
take  the  charm  from  A  Sea  Dream,  or  Maud  Mutter,  or  Tell- 


212  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

ing  the  Bees,  or  that  poem,  In  School-Days,  which  Dr.  Holmes 
cried  over  and  Matthew  Arnold  himself  praised  as  perfect. 
Whittier  never  married.  The  little  romances  of  his  youth 
slipped  quietly  into  memories  and  imparted  a  finer  tone  to  the 
poetry  of  his  mature  years.  The  passions  of  his 
manhood  were  expended  in  the  cause  for  which 
he  labored,  and  his  affections  were  given  up  to 
his  home,  and  to  his  mother  and  sister  while  they  lived.  But 
there  was  a  stronger  strain  than  all  these,  the  strain  of 
devotion  to  the  simple  religious  faith  he  cherished  and  of  love 
for  the  Great  Love  which  he  saw  ruling  the  destinies  of  men 
and  nations.  We  must  therefore  add  to  the  three  classes  of 
poems  we  have  already  described — the  poems  of  freedom, 
the  legendary  ballads,  and  the  New  England  idyls — a  fourth, 
the  religious  poems  and  hymns.  That  Whittier  knew  some 
thing  of  the  trials  of  faith  and  the  heart-shaking  questions 
that  assailed  the  man  in  the  land  of  Uz  is  shown  by  his 
dramatic  My  Soul  and  I,  and  the  yearning  Questions  of  Life: — 

"I  am:  how  little  more  I  know! 
Whence  came  I?     Whither  do  I  go? 
A  centred  self,  which  feels  and  is; 
A  cry  between  the  silences; 
A  shadow-birth  of  clouds  as  strife 
With  sunshine  on  the  hills  of  life." 

But  these  were  passing  moods.  The  full  confession  of  his 
faith — a  confession  that  leaves  no  place  for  doubt  or  despon 
dency — is  rather  to  be  sought  in  such  later  poems  as  My 
Psalm,  Trust,  Revelation,  The  Over-Heart,  The  Eternal  Good 
ness. 

It  was  after  the  war,  and  after  the  sad  break  in  his  domes 
tic  life  caused  by  the  death  of  his  sister  Elizabeth,  that  WThit- 
tier's  mind  set  like  an  ebbing  tide  toward  the  sea  of  past  mem 
ories;  and  then  came  the  composition  of  Snow-Bound,  an 
idyl  of  winter  and  of  home-life  in  the  Arcadian  age  of  New 


WHITTIER  213 

England.     Even  for  a  second  generation  of  readers,  descrip 

tion  or  praise  of  it  seems  almost  superfluous,  so  securely  has 

this  poem,  with  its  simple  rustic  pictures  and  its 

Bound"  1866.  deep  religious  faith,  maintained  itself  in  the  popu- 

"TheTenton 

]ar  affection.     It  bids  fair  to  take  rank  with  such 


classics  as  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  and  The 
Deserted  Village;  in  America  it  is  today  more  widely  read 
than  either.  The  Tent  on  the  Beach  of  the  year  following 
was  another  large  composition,  but  less  coherent.  It  was 
such  a  sheaf  of  stories  as  an  aging  poet  likes  to  gather,  and 
makes  a  kind  of  companion  piece  to  Longfellow's  Tales  of  a 
Wayside  Inn. 

For  just  a  quarter  of  a  century  longer  Whittier  was  spared, 
to  complete  many  other  volumes  and  separate  poems.     He 

would  not  venture  to  visit  that  "night-mare  con- 
Years.  fusion  of  the  world's  curiosity  shop,"  the  Centen 

nial  Exposition  of  1876  at  Philadelphia,  but  he 
wrote  the  stately  hymn  that  was  sung  at  its  .  opening.  His 
last  years  were  spent  quietly  with  his  relatives  at  various 
places  in  the  Essex  County  neighborhood.  He  died  at 
Hampton  Falls,  New  Hampshire,  September  7,  1892,  in  the 
eighty-fifth  year  of  his  age;  and  Holmes  was  the  only  one  of 
the  great  New  England  group  left  to  mourn  his  departure  :  — 

"Best  loved  and  saintliest  of  our  singing  train, 

Earth's  noblest  tributes  to  thy  name  belong. 
A  lifelong  record  closed  without  a  stain, 

A  blameless  memory  shrined  in  deathless  song." 

Whittier's  rise  to  national  fame  was  comparatively  slow. 

He  never  obtruded  himself  as  a  poet,  nor  made  bids  for 

critical    appreciation.     Those    who    were    most 

Bard  and  .  .  .    . 

Phiian-          deeply  interested  in  the  abolition  of  slavery  and 

who  came  to  know  him  early  and  well,  scarcely 

thought  of  him  as  a  poet,  but.  rather  as  a  rhyming  champion 

of  the  cause  they  had  at  heart.     But  he  gradually  endeared 


214  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

himself  to  the  hundreds  who  read  poetry  for  its  own  sake,  and 
by  almost  imperceptible  degrees,  and  especially  after  the 
establishment  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and  his  contributions 
to  it,  he  came  to  be  generally  recognized  as  a  worthy  member 
of  the  New  England  group  who  already  counted  him  one  of 
themselves.  Finally,  the  publication  of  Snow-Bound  with  its 
sustained  beauty  and  intense  human  quality  set  him  quite  out 
of  the  ranks  of  occasional  singers  and  left  no  doubt  of  his  place. 

His  reputation  has  grown  steadily  ever  since;  and  it  seems 
likely  to  endure,  for  it  rests  upon  a  genuineness  that  is  above 
all  suspicion.  However  much  we  may  talk  of  the  genuine 
ness  of  Bryant  or  Longfellow  or  Lowrell,  that  of  Whittier  is 
seen  to  be  of  a  still  finer  strain.  It  was  equalled  only  by 
Emerson's.  And  Whittier  got  closer  to  the  hearts  of  the 
people  by  being  free  from  Emerson's  skyey  philosophy.  If 
Longfellow  was  a  poet  for  the  people,  Whittier  was  a  poet 
of  the  people.  He  was  content  to  use  the  very  dialect  of  the 
people  he  knew  and  loved,  and  protested  to  his  publisher  that 
in  that  dialect  war  and  law,  Martha  and  swarthy,  pasture  and 
faster,  were  good  rhymes.  Uncultured  he  might  be  called; 
he  did  not  care.  He  looked  at  life  through  no  medium  of 
tradition  or  false  education.  Standing  in  what  Carlyle  would 
call  a  close  first  relation  to  men  and  things,  his  were  the  ideal 
conditions  of  a  bard. 

Moreover,  he  brought  to  those  conditions  the  sufficient 
gifts,  first,  the  native  impulse,  and  second,  the  power  of  song. 
He  was  a  poet,  not  by  choice  and  cultivation,  as  Longfellow, 
nor  by  fitful  inspiration,  as  Bryant,  Emerson,  and  Lowell,  but 
always  and  uncontrollably,  by  high  compulsion.  His  num 
bers  were  never  studied.  Like  Emerson,  he  sang  instinct 
ively  in  the  primitive  four-beat  measure;  only,  rhythmical 
and  musical  language  came  to  him  far  more  easily  than  to 
Emerson.  He  who  idealized  humble  life  and  toil  like  Burns, 
sang  with  the  lyric  ease  of  Burns. 


LOWELL  215 

The  slight  valuation  he  set  upon  his  gifts  must  itself  go  to 
his  credit.  Bard  though  he  was,  he  refused  to  regard  himself 
as  such,  steadfastly  putting  life  first  and  poetry  second.  Thus 
he  came,  in  mature  manhood,  to  devote  his  whole  energy 
to  the  eradication  of  our  national  crime.  It  was  poetry's 
loss,  possibly,  and  may  account  for  the  fact  that  we  have 
scarcely  any  single  work  of  magnitude  from  his  pen;  for  the 
fruit  of  this  productive  period  of  his  life  is  to  be  sought  in  our 
social  and  not  in  our  literary  history.  The  literature  that  he 
produced  then  we  must  today  account  of  minor  value:  no 
number  of  Ichabods  or  of  Pastoral  Letters  can  outweigh  one 
Marguerite  or  one  Sea-Dream.  Yet  Whittier  himself  would 
have  been  the  last  to  deplore  the  loss.  That  his  poetry 
written  with  a  purpose  was  of  less  literary  value  than  his  pro 
ducts  of  calmer  art  he  would  acknowledge,  rejoicing  still  that 
his  life  had  come  to  be  dominated  by  such  a  noble  purpose. 
We  have  only  to  read  his  Proem  to  discover  the  modesty  of 
his  own  claims  so  far  as  rank  in  literature  is  concerned.  He 
was  satisfied  if  he  could  be  written  down  as  one  who  loved  his 
fellow-men,  one  who,  in  the  words  of  the  prelude  of  Among 
the  Hills,  gave  his  prayers  and  strength  to  lift  manhood  up 

"Through  broader  culture,  finer  manners,  love, 
And  reverence,  to  the  level  of  the  hills." 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  1819-1891 

Of  the  writers  of  first  importance  whom  we  have  thus  far 
treated,  only  Thoreau  was  born  later  than  1809.  With  James 
Russell  Lowell,  whose  birth  fell  on  the  twenty-second  of 
February,  1819,  we  are  carried  forward  a  full  decade.  But 
Lowell  began  his  work  so  early  and  was  so  closely  associated 
with  the  other  great  New  England  writers  that  he  must  be 
regarded  as  virtually  their  contemporary,  a  junior  member  of 
the.  group.  One  part  of  his  fame,  and  in  all  probability  the 
most  enduring  part,  belongs  to  the  ante-bellum  period. 


216  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

The  early  surroundings  of  Whittier  and  of  Lowell  present 
nearly  as  striking  a  contrast  as  the  conditions  of  New  England 
life  could  afford.  The  two  men  were  alike  in  being 
Fnfluences.  descended  from  families  of  sterling  worth,  but  in 
other  respects  Lowell  was  far  more  favored,  having 
all  the  means  and  incentives  to  culture  which  Whittier 
lacked.  The  Lowell  family,  in  its  several  branches,  has 
long  been  prominent  in  Massachusetts.  The  city  of  Lowell 
was  named  in  honor  of  Francis  Cabot  Lowell,  an  uncle 
of  the  poet,  who  introduced  cotton  manufacturing  into  the 
United  States;  the  Lowell  Institute  at  Boston,  with  its  free 
lectures  on  religion,  science,  and  art,  was  the  gift  of  Fran 
cis  Cabot's  son;  the  poet's  grandfather  drafted  the  anti- 
slavery  clause  in  the  Massachusetts  Bill  of  Rights;  his  father, 
the  Reverend  Charles  Lowell,  was  for  more  than  fifty  years 
a  minister  of  Boston;  his  elder  brother,  Robert  Traill  Spence 
Lowell,  and  his  sister,  Mrs.  Putnam,  both  became  writers  of 
some  note. 

James  Russell,  the  youngest  son  of  the  family,  was  born 
at  Cambridge,  in  the  beautiful  home  known  as  Elmwooo.,  and 
lived  and  died  there.  In  this  he  was  more  fortunate  than  most 
Americans,  who,  said  Holmes,  are  "all  cuckoos — -we  make  our 
homes  in  the  nests  of  other  birds."  The  house  at  Elmwood 
was,  like  Craigie  House,  an  historic  place  of  Revolution 
ary  memories;  and  the  secluded,  ample  grounds  made  a  fine 
rural  refuge  for  a  youth  of  poetic  fancies  To  understand 
fully  what  this  home  meant  to  the  poet,  both  in  youth  and  in 
maturity,  one  should  read  his  Indian  Summer  Reverie  and 
Under  the  Willows.  Nor  was  there  only  wealth  for  the  nature- 
lover  out  of  doors;  there  were  also  treasures  for  the  lover  of 
books  within.  The  Lowell  library  was  the  accumulation  of 
several  generations  of  scholarly  men,  and  Lowell,  familiar 
almost  from  infancy  with  books  that  Whittier  even  in  the 
studious  leisure  of  his  old  age  never  looked  into,  used  to  fall 


LOWELL  217 

asleep  to  the  reading  of  Spenser  and  the  old  English  drama 
tists. 

Possibly  these  advantages  carried  with  them  disadvan 
tages.  Lowell  in  his  youth  was  shy,  over-sensitive,  and  per 
haps  over-proud.  Certainly  it  is  hard  to  discover  in  his  early 
letters  the  manliness  and  simplicity  into  which  he  finally 
matured.  He  was  sent  to  Harvard  as  a  matter  of  course — 
was  a  sophomore  there  in  1836,  when  Longfellow  succeeded 
Ticknor  as  Professor  of  Romance  Languages,  and  heard 
Emerson's  address  on  The  American  Scholar  in  the  fall  of  1837. 
In  the  last  year  of  his  residence  he  was  one  of  the  editors  of 
the  college  magazine,  Harvardiana.  He  was  elected  class 
poet;  but  for  some  delinquency  or  offence,  about  which 
mystery  seems  still  to  hang,  he  was  "rusticated"  by  the 
Faculty.  That  meant  that  he  was  banished  to  Concord  to 
finish  his  studies  privately,  and  that  he  could  not  be  present 
on  Class  Day,  or  read  his  poem,  though  he  was  allowed  to 
return  on  Commencement  Day  and  take  his  degree.  Nat 
urally  he  conceived  a  boyish  dislike  for  Concord  and  for  the 
Transcendentalism  with  which  he  came  into  some  contact 
there.  Emerson  he  regarded  as  "a  good-natured  man  in  spite 
of  his  doctrines." 

At  the  time  of  his  graduation  he  was  quite  as  undecided 
upon  a  "career"  as  Longfellow  had  been,  and  was  apparently 
without  Longfellow's  bias  toward  scholarship  and  literature. 
He  actually  thought  of  all  the  professions  in  turn  and  also  of 
mercantile  life.  He  studied  law,  and  indulged  for  a  while  in 
the  delight  of  paying  office-rent,  but  never  really  practiced. 
He  did  a  little  aimless  contributing  to  magazines,  and  he 
published  an  unimportant  volume  of  poems,  A  Year's  Life, 
in  1841.  The  real  turning-point  of  his  life  seems  to  have  been 
his  marriage  to  Maria  White  in  1844.  She  was  a  woman  of 
beauty  and  of  culture,  and  was  possessed  moreover  of  a 
sensitively  humane  spirit.  The  anti-slavery  movement, 


218  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

which  was  just  then  making  rapid  headway,  engaged  her 
sympathies,  and,  possibly  through  hers,  Lowell's.  The  man 
who  in  his  class  poem  had  ridiculed  the  abolitionists,  was  soon 
found  writing  on  their  side;  and  the  history  of  Lowell  from 
this  time  on  is  the  history  of  an  earnest,  large-hearted,  broad- 
minded  man — a  poet,  a  scholar,  a  statesman,  and  a  patriot. 
The  four  years  from  184^  to  1848  were  among  the  most 
productive  and  happy  in  Lowell's  life.  In  the  first  of  these 
years  he  published  a  second  volume  of  poems,  this 
Literary  time  attracting  some  favorable  attention.  Then, 

Period. 

under  the  influence  of  the  public  excitement 
aroused  by  the  admission  of  Texas  into  the  Union,  a  move 
ment  generally  regarded  as  aiming  at  the  extension  of  slave 
territory,  he  wrote  The  Present  Crisis.,  revealing  at  once  both 
the  moral  earnestness  and  the  poetic  fire  that  were  latent  with 
in  him: — 

"Once  to  every  man  and  nation  comes  the  moment  to  decide, 
In  the  strife  of  Truth  with  Falsehood,  for  the  good  or  evil  side." 

It  was  indeed  a  "dolorous  and  jarring  blast,"  so  charged 
with  indignation  as  to  arouse  the  most  apathetic  reader  in  its 
own  day  and  so  informed  with  the  spirit  of  righteousness  that 
its  echoes  ring  yet : — 

"Truth  forever  on  the^ scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on  the  throne, — 
Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future,  and,  behind  the  dim  unknown, 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  his  own." 

The  two  great  products  of  these  years,  however,  were 
The  Biglow  Papers  and  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal.  The 

Mexican  War  followed  upon  the  annexation  of 
Pap«r^low  Texas,  and  those  who  shared  Lowell's  political 

sentiments  were  more  indignant  than  ever.  In 
the  summer  of  1846  a  regiment  was  raised  in  Boston,  and 
Lowell  was  moved  by  the  sight  of  a  recruiting  officer  on  the 


LOWELL  219 

streets  to  write  what  he  called  "a  squib"  and  send  it  to  the 
Boston  Courier: — 

"Thrash  away,  you'll  hev  to  rattle 

On  them  kittle-drums  o'  yourn, — 
'Taint  a  knowin'  kind  o'  cattle 

Thet  is  ketched  with  mouldy  corn." 

In  keeping  with  its  Yankee  dialect,  it  was  signed  "Hosea 
Biglow."  Other  poems  of  a  similar  character  followed,  and 
they  proved  so  popular  that  in  1848  Lowell  issued  the  series 
in  a  volume,  with  numerous  interesting  prefaces  and  letters 
purporting  to  come  from  one  "Parson  Wilbur,"  who  played 
the  role  of  friend  and  adviser  to  the  young  rustic  poet,  Hosea. 
The  third  number,  "What  Mr.  Robinson  Thinks,"  which 
grew  out  of  a  little  passage  in  local  politics,  had,  upon  its 
first  appearance,  run  like  wildfire  over  the  reading  public  of 
America,  and,  we  are  told,  of  England.  Everywhere  could 
be  heard  the  refrain — 

"But  John  P. 

Robinson  he     . 
Sez  he  wunt  vote  fer  Guvener  B." 

Another  happy  hit  was  "The  Pious  Editor's  Creed,"  with  its 
declaration — 

"I  don't  believe  in  princerple, 
But  oh,  I  du  in  interest." 

But  the  hardest  knocks  were  reserved  for  the  war  and  slav 
ery.  Lowell's  quick  native  sense  of  humor — for  these  papers 
belong  also  very  distinctly  to  the  literature  of  humor — did 
him  double  service.  It  afforded  an  outlet  for  his  feelings, 
leaving  him  personally  even-tempered  and  happy  in  most 
trying  times;  and  it  enabled  him  to  reach  an  audience  that 
remained  unmoved  by  the  sober  appeals  of  men  like  Garrison, 
Phillips,  and  Whittier.  People  who,  with  no  particular 
sympathy  for  his  sentiments,  read  the  Biglow  Papers  for  the 


220  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

wit  and  humor  that  were  in  them,  came  often  upon  passages 
that  compelled  them  to  stop  and  think : — 

"Ef  you  take  a  sword  an'  dror  it, 

An'  go  stick  a  feller  thru, 
Guv'ment  aint  to  answer  for  it, 
God '11  send  the  bill  to  you." 

Such  doctrine  was  sometimes  called  unpatriotic,  but  Lowell 
scarcely  needed  to  answer  that  charge.  Hosea  Biglow  was 
thoroughly  loyal;  as  Parson  Wilbur  jestingly  put  it,  "In  the 
plowing  season,  no  one  has  a  deeper  share  in  the  well-being  of 
the  country  than  he."  It  was  patriotism  with  conscience 
added.  The  conscience  of  Puritan  New  England  was  speak 
ing  out,  just  as  it  had  always  spoken,  and  it  was  indisputably 
making  itself  heard.  A  second  series  of  the  papers  was 
written  during  the  Civil  War,  and  contained,  along  with  much 
of  the  same  piercing  satire  as  marked  the  first  series,  the 
beautiful  "Suthin  in  the  Pastoral  Line."  Among  the  prefa 
tory  matter  there  was  published  with  both  series  (revised  in 
the  second)  that  unique  picture  of  Yankee  life  known  as  The 
Courting  which  an  Edinburgh  critic  has  called  "one  of  the 
freshest  bits  of  pastoral  in  the  language." 

From  The  Biglow  Papers  to  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  is  a 
far  cry.  But  Lowell,  like  Whittier,  could  turn  from  the  heat 
and  strife  of  public  affairs  to  the  solace  of  pure  poetry,  and 
"build  a  bridge  from  Dreamland  for  his  lay."  One  of  the 
most  spiritually  significant  of  the  legends  that  have  come 

down  from  the  early  days  of  Christianity,  namely, 
of  sir  *'  the  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail,  the  cup  of  emerald 

from  which  Christ  drank  at  the  last  supper,  gave 
Lowell  an  inspiration,  and  within  forty-eight  hours,  so  we  are 
told,  the  poem  of  knightly  aspiration  and  brotherly  love  was 
written .  The  sub j  ec t  was  handled  freely ;  there  was  not  much 
attempt  to  preserve  the  legendary  atmosphere.  Holmes 
found  fault  with  the  dandelions  and  the  Baltimore  oriole 


LOWELL  221 

"in  the  tableau  of  the  old  feudal  castle."  But  the  freshness, 
vigor,  and  beauty  of  the  poem  have  been  universally  praised. 
It  makes  one  think  of  the  rapturous  song  of  Shelley's  skylark 
that  "from  heaven  or  near  it"  pours  his  full  heart 

"In  profuse  strains  of  unpremeditated  art." 

Holmes  might  well  forget,  as  many  years  later  he  declared  he 
forgot,  that  Lowell  was  "a  wit  and  a  humorist,  a  critic  and  an 
essayist,"  in  the  presence  of  such  buoyant,  palpitating  poetry. 
A  third  work,  published  in  this  same  year  1848,  but  of  a 
much  lower  order  of  merit,  was  A  Fable  for  Critics.  It  was  a 
long  criticism  in  rhyme  of  the  American  writers 
for  critics."  wno  were  then  prominent,  and  it  was  so  penetrat 
ing,  so  illuminating,  and  so  witty,  that  it  is  con 
stantly  quoted  still.  To  say  that  it  was  always  temperate  or 
just  would  be  going  too  far,  and  we  should  be  on  our  guard 
against  giving  too  much  weight  to  its  criticisms.  We  must 
remember  that  Lowell  was  still  a  young  man  under  thirty, 
writing  in  this  case  anonymously,  with  every  temptation  to  be 
witty  and  satirical.  He  over-praised  Willis,  as  did  almost 
everybody  else;  he  could  not  fairly  estimate  men  without 
humor,  like  Bryant  and  Cooper;  he  said  altogether  too  little 
of  Poe,  and  altogether  too  much  of  Margaret  Fuller  ("Mi 
randa"),  whom  he  scored  unmercifully.  But  his  appre 
ciation  of  Hawthorne  before  Hawthorne's  greatest  work  was 
done  was  much  to  his  credit,  and  many  of  his  happily- 
phrased  estimates,  like  that  of  Emerson  as  "a  Greek  head  on 
right  Yankee  shoulders,"  deserve  to  be  long  remembered. 

Lowell's  wife  died  in  1853  and  he  married  again  in  1857. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  made  several  trips  to  Europe,  and 

upon  his  return  from  the  second  trip  he  entered 

Literary         upon  what  might  be  called  the  second  fruitful 

period  of  his  life.     He    was    appointed    to    the 

Smith  Professorship  of  Romance  Languages  at  Harvard  upon 


222  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

Longfellow's  resignation,  and  assumed  his  duties  there, 
which  extended  over  a  period  of  twenty  years,  in  1856.  In 
the  spring  of  1857  he  attended  a  memorable  dinner-party 
given  by  the  publisher,  Mr.  Moses  D.  Phillips,  and  his 
"literary  man,"  Francis  H.  Underwood,  who  were  proposing 
to  establish  a  literary  magazine.  The  arrangement  of  the 
table  at  that  party  was  as  follows : 

Phillips 

Emerson  Longfellow 

Holmes  Motley 

Lowell  Cabot 

Underwood 

The  next  autumn  the  magazine  was  duly  launched — the  third 
important  enterprise  of  this  kind  in  the  annals  of  Boston  pub 
lishing.  The  North  American  Review,  it  will  be  remembered, 
was  established  there  in  1815,  and  the  short-lived  Dial  in 
1840.  The  neV  magazine  was  named,  at  the  suggestion  of 
Dr.  Holmes,  The  Atlantic  Monthly;  Lowell  was  given  the 
editorship;  and  within  six  months  it  was  declared  on  high 
authority,  to  be  at  that  time,  "unquestionably  the  best  maga 
zine  in  the  English  language."  It  represented  far  more 
than  talent — it  represented  the  best  literary  genius  that 
the  Atlantic  states  could  boast,  and  that  means  the  high 
est  literary  genius  that  America  has  yet  produced.  After 
four  years  Lowell  resigned  his  editorship  to  James  T.  Fields, 
and  a  little  later  became  joint  editor  with  Charles  Eliot 
Norton  of  The  North  American  Review;  but  he  continued  to 
make  contributions  to  the  Atlantic,  both  in  verse  and  in  prose. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  war  his  touching  Washers  of  the  Shroud 
appeared  in  it,  and  the  second  series  of  The  Biglow  Papers 
was  published  in  its  pages.  The  interest  with  which  he  fol 
lowed  the  events  of  those  terrible  years  was  deepened  and 
saddened  by  the  loss  of  three  nephews  who  fought  on  the  side 


LOWELL  223 

of  the  Union.  There  are  pathetic  references  to  them,  both 
in  The  Biglow  Papers  and  in  the  introduction  of  his  essay 
On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners.  At  the  close  of 
the  war,  Lowell  composed,  in  another  white  heat  of  poetic 
ardor,  and  recited  at  the  Harvard  Commemoration,  his 
uneven  but  lofty  Commemoration  Ode,  with  its  noble  tribute 
to  Abraham  Lincoln,  ''Our  Martyr-Chief,"  and  its  fervent, 
benediction-like  close,  beginning— 

"Bow  down,  dear  Land,  for  thou  hast  found  release!" 

But  the  chief  product  of  this  second  period  of  Lowell's 
activity  is  to  be  sought  in  his  prose  essays.  Late  in  life  he 
was  ripening  into  that  scholarship  of  which  he  had 
seemed  so  careless  in  youth  but  for  which  his  youth 
had  been  such  an  excellent  preparation.  In  1864  he  pub 
lished  Fireside  Travels;  in  1870  and  1876  the  two  series  of 
Among  My  Books;  and  in  1871  My  Study  Windows,— so 
named  (the  name  was  given  by  the  publishers)  perhaps 
because  the  study  windows  look  not  only  in  upon  books,  but 
also  out  upon  the  garden  and  the  busy  world  beyond.  Most 
of  the  essays  are  critical  and  find  their  themes  in  English  and 
foreign  literature — Dante,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Carlyle, 
Emerson.  But  there  is  a  considerable  range  outside  cf 
literature,  and  the  ordinary  reader  is  likely  to  care  more  for 
the  discursive  essays  on  general  themes,  such  as  My  Garden 
Acquaintance,  A  Good  Word  for  Winter,  and  Cambridge 
Thirty  Years  Ago.  It  would  be  impossible  to  select  from 
them  any  single  passage  that  would  give  a  fair  idea  of  either 
their  substance  or  their  manner,  so  diversified  is  the  one  and 
so  mutable  the  other.  But  to  those  who  would  know  Lowell 
at  his  most  centralized  and  best, — Lowell  the  man  rather  than 
Lowell  the  scholar,— the  opening  of  the  essay  On  a  Certain 
Condescension  in  Foreigners  may  be  commende.d  as  revealing 
something  of  the  interior  charm  to  which  occasionally, 


224  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

thrusting  aside  more  showy  qualities,  he  ventured  to  give 
expression. 

The  field  of  Lowell's  usefulness  was  to  widen  still  further. 
As  poet,  as  essayist,  and  as  editor,  he  had  served  the  cause 
both  of  American  nationality  and  of  American 
Period.  literature,  and  he  was  called  upon  to  continue  this 

double  service  in  another  capacity.  In  1877  he 
was  appointed  Minister  to  Spain,  where  Irving  had  been  sent 
more  than  thirty  years  before;  and  in  1880  he  was  transfer 
red  to  the  court  of  St.  James.  There  he  distinguished  him 
self  by  tact,  courtesy,  and  wisdom,  and  won  the  admiration 
of  the  English  people.  The  disinterested  character  of  their 
admiration  was  shown  by  their  hearty  applause  of  an  act 
that  called  for  no  little  courage  from  him — the  delivery  at 
Birmingham  of  an  address  on  Democracy.  Critics  there 
had  been,  on  this  side  of  the  water,  outspoken  in  their  censure 
of  Lowell's  friendliness  for  the  English  aristocracy,  but  they 
were  silenced  by  this  address.  It  was  the  mature  declaration 
of  his  political  faith,  breathing  the  purest  Americanism,  and 
it  constituted  a  fitting  culmination  to  a  life  of  consistent 
loyalty. 

Returning  to  America  in  1885,  Lowell  continued  to  deliver 
addresses,  both  at  the  Lowell  Institute,  and  on  public  occa 
sions  at  various  places  when  his  strength  would  permit.  He 
wrote  poems,  too,  and  published  in  1888  Heartsease  and  Rue,  a 
final  volume.  He  died  in  1891,  at  the  age  of  seventy-two. 
On  the  publication  of  his  letters  by  Professor  C.  E.  Norton 
two  years  later — the  most  charming  letters  that  American 
literature  can  yet  show — something  of  the  Lowell  that  was 
known  to  his  friends  and  companions  was  revealed  to  the 
wider  public,  to  whom  his  name  was  already  as  familiar  as 
Longfellow's  and  Emerson's. 

In  quantity,  Lowell's  poetry  compares  pretty  evenly  with 
Whittier's,  considerably  exceeding  the  meagre  product  of 


LOWELL  225 

Bryant  or  Poe,  but  falling  short  of  the  fecundity  of  Long 
fellow.     In  character,  too,  it  occupies  a  place  between  the  nar 
row,  exalted  verse  of  the  twro  former  poets,  and  the 
Poltry.  easy  charm  and  universal  popularity  of  the  latter's. 

Lowell  was  widely  popular,  almost  from  the 
first.  The  magazines  were  quite  as  eager  to  publish  his  work 
as  they  were  to  publish  Longfellow's.  But  that  he  satisfied 
some  temporary  craving  of  the  people  rather  than  any  per 
ennial  hunger  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  his  collected  and 
reprinted  works  never  sold  so  widely.  Longfellow's  books 
lay  on  every  family  table,  and  the  family,  moreover,  was 
familiar  with  their  contents.  Lowell's  name  was  rather 
better  known  than  his  books;  and  though  readers  of  dis 
cernment  were  inevitably  attracted  to  him,  he  never  made 
upon  them  quite  the  same  depth  and  intensity  of  impression 
that  was  made  by  Bryant,  Poe,  or  Whittier.  It  is  only  by 
the  help  of  his  prose  that  his  name  stands  so  securely  by 
theirs. 

Yet  if,  as  just  intimated,  few  of  Lowell's  poems  have  fixed 
themselves  indelibly  in  the  minds  of  readers,  all  will  concede 
to  them  sterling  qualities — the  devout  worship  of  nature,  for 
instance,  that  informs  such  poems  as  To  the  Dandelion  and 
Pictures  from  Appledore,  the  human  tenderness  and  pathos 
of  The  First  Snow-Fall  and  After  the  Burial,  the  Greek 
beauty  of  Rhcecus,  or  the  equally  compelling  if  more  modern 
charm  of  a  poem  like  Hebe: — 

"I  saw  the  twinkle  of  white  feet, 
I  saw  the  flash  of  robes  descending; 
Before  her  ran  an  influence  fleet 
That  bowed  my  heart  like  barley  bending." 

Doubtless  Lowell's  pure  poetry — and  by  this  is  meant  poetry 
written  for  poetry's  sake — is  found  at  its  best  in  the  longer 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal.  It  is  a  poem  such  as  a  man  must  write 
in  youth  or  not  at  all — a  poem  of  boundless  faith  and  high 


226  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

ideals,  and  all-including  worship  of  beauty  and  purity.  And 
the  poem  is  for  youth:  teachers  know  that  it  is  a  positive 
moral  force  in  our  schools  today.  We  are  scarcely  willing 
to  accept  it,  however,  as  a  product  of  high  poetic  genius.  It 
is  conceived  so  much  in  the  artistic  spirit,  makes  so  much  of 
form,  that  we  cannot,  as  in  the  case  of  Emerson's  Threnody, 
waive  the  tests  of  art;  and  yet  it  is  defective  in  art.  It  is 
marred  by  haste  and  carelessness,  it  has  faulty  figures  and 
discordant  lines.  It  was  not  to  be  expected,  perhaps,  that 
Dr.  Holmes  should  take  kindly  to  its  metre — the  "rattlety 
bang  sort  of  verse,"  he  called  it,  that  was  revived  in  Cole 
ridge's  ChristabeL  But  Christabel  is  everywhere  musical; 
it  contains  no  such  lines  as 

"Hang  my  idle  armor  up  on  the  wall," — 

"And  through  the  dark  arch  a  charger  sprang," — 

"  And  the  wanderer  is  welcome  to  the  hall." 

This  last  line  may  be  read  in  three;  five,  or  six  feet,  but  scarce 
ly  in  four,  the  number  it  should  have.  Even  the  first  four 
lines  of  the  famous  description  of  June,  which  as  a  whole  is 
scarcely  to  be  surpassed  for  poetic  rapture,  are  confusing  in 
imagery  and  unsatisfying  in  rhythm.  Fine  as  the  poem  is, 
it  is  not  quite  fine  enough.  It  needed,  in  addition  to  its 
genuine  inspiration,  the  perfect  art  of  a  Tennyson,  and  it 
lacks  that  art.  Lowell  was  confessedly  indolent  in  such 
matters,  but  it  seems  more  than  likely  that  the  defect  was  an 
inherent  one;  he  never  acquired  the  perfect  art.  Late  in  life 
he  wrote  his  longest  and  most  ambitious  poem,  The  Cathe 
dral.  It  was  as  distinctive  as  a  poem  could  well  be — 
brilliant,  profound,  stimulating;  but  it  was  overweighted  with 
thought,  and  the  adornments  of  wit  were  made  to  supply  the 
place  of  the  adornments  of  art.  Besides,  the  early  spon 
taneity  was  missing.  At  its  best  the  poem  was  sensuous 
and  even  passionate,  but  it  was  almost  never  fresh  or  simple. 
Emerson,  who  was  asked  to  review  it,  refused,  seeing  too 


LOWELL  227 

clearly  that  the  Muses'  well  had  ceased  to  flow  and  that  the 
poet  "had  to  pump." 

Greatest  after  all  are  his  occasional  poems—  The  Biglow 
Papers  and  the  Commemoration  Ode.  Lowell  had  a  rare 
knack  of  penetrating  to  the  heart  of  men  and  events.  He  saw 
the  universal  beneath  the  local,  the  eternal  beneath  the  tem 
poral.  And  so  out  of  a  country  courtship  he  made  a  national 
poem,  and  created  lasting  types  of  character  out  of  an 
unscrupulous  politician,  a  cowardly  Congressman,  a  fawning 
candidate,  a  time-serving  editor.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
was  a  scholar  he  almost  paralleled  the  achievement  of  Burns 
and  became  the  mouth-piece  of  a  clan.  The  Biglow  Papers 
are  Yankee  to  the  core,  perpetuating  the  dialect  with  its 
racy  idiom,  and  the  character  with  its  shrewd  wit  and  homely 
wisdom.  As  satire  they  rank  with  the  best  in  literature,  and 
they  rise  above  most  satire  in  the  manliness  of  their  tone  and 
the  sacredness  of  their  cause.  The  Commemoration  Ode,  too, 
though  marred  by  some  of  the  same  defects  as  The  Vision 
of  Sir  Launfal,  is  the  best  poem  evoked  by  the  Civil  War  and 
its  consequences.  It  is  Northern,  yet  national,— patriotic 
with  a  patriotism  chastened  by  sorrow  into  something 
inexpressibly  noble. 

Lowell's  abundant  wit  and  his  broad,  even  if  not  remark 
ably  deep  or  sound,  scholarship,  show  to  best  advantage  in 
his  prose.  He  read  much  and  remembered  all, 
>S6'  and  could  marshal  his  knowledge  at  any  moment 
to  serve  his  immediate  ends.  The  richness  of  his  prose,  both 
in  substance  and  style  is  amazing.  The  variety  of 
knowledges  he  lays  under  contribution  for  the  illustration  and 
adornment  of  his  ideas  exceeds,  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say, 
that  of  Macaulay  and  Carlyle  combined.  There  is  one  sen 
tence  in  his  essay  on  Swinburne's  Tragedies  that  draws  on 
Greek,  Latin,  philology,  psychology,  optics,  inebriation,  and 
Mississippi  steamboat  navigation.  The  sentence  just  before 


228  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

it  has  a  technical  term  from  metrics,  the  sentence  before  that 
a  figure  from  free-masonry,  and  the  sentence  before  that  a 
technical  term  from  the  Old  French  law.  Every  one  who 
knows  Lowell's  prose  knows,  too,  that  this  is  scarcely  an 
extreme  instance.  The  allusions  are  often  so  profuse  as  to 
discourage  all  but  very  well-informed  readers,  while  for  those 
who  can  understand  and  enjoy  them  the  reading  is  turned 
into  a  kind  of  intellectual  debauch.  Allusion  is  packed  within 
allusion,  metaphor  within  metaphor,  like  a  Chinese  wooden- 
egg.  Or,  to  change  the  figure,  his  fancies  loom  up  one  behind 
the  other  like  the  roofs,  towers,  'and  steeples  of  a  distant 
city.  You  never  know  when  you  have  found  all  that  is 
hidden  in  one  of  Lowell's  pages. 

Again,  his  style  is  a  style  of  infinite  paraphrase.  The 
commonest  ideas  take  on  most  fanciful  disguises  and  seldom 
does  anything  reappear  without  changing  its  form.  Holland 
gin  becomes  a  "Batavian  elixir,"  a  negro  minstrel  an  "Ethi 
opian  serenader;"  a  coat  of  whitewash  is  a  "candent  bap 
tism;"  a  lying  tramp  is  a  "beggar,"  a  "vagrant,"  a  "heroic 
man  on  an  imaginary  journey,"  a  "seeker  of  the  unattain 
able,"  an  "abridged  edition  of  the  Wandering  Jew;"  the 
barber  who  makes  a  slip  of  the  shears  "oversteps  the  boun 
daries  of  strict  tonsorial  prescription  and  makes  a  notch 
through  which  the  phrenological  developments  can  be 
distinctly  seen!"  Moreover,  Lowell  sees  the  humorous  side 
of  everything,  and  wit  sparkles  everywhere — sometimes 
indeed  to  the  offence  of  good  taste.  He  is  an  inveterate 
punster.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  anywhere  else  in  the 
same  space  as  large  a  number  of  good  puns  as  may  be  found 
in  his  published  letters.  But  when  we  find  the  same  sort  of 
thing  in  serious  essays,  we  cannot  approve.  Wit  is  for  the 
passing  moment  and  looks  ghastly  graven  on  a  monument. 

True,  these  are  lordly,  generous  qualities,  and  they  have 
the  additional  grace  of  coming  unsought;  for  Lowell  does  not 


LOWELL  229 

strive  to  be  affluent — he  cannot  avoid  being  so.  .Mr.  Stedman 
has  somewhere  said,  speaking  of  poetry,  that  "Lowell  has 
sprinkled  the  whole  subject  with  diamond  dust."  So  he  has 
sprinkled  everything:  to  be  spendthrift  is  his  function.  But 
while  we  envy  him  his  brilliant  gifts  we  cannot  help  wishing 
that  he  had  learned  and  exercised  greater  restraint,  or  that  he 
had  cultivated  more  sedulously  certain  finer  qualities.  Now 
and  then  he  curbs  his  high  spirits  and  tempers  his  exuberance 
with  a  quiet,  pensive  strain.  But  in  general  the  temptations 
to  adornment  and  to  mirth  are  too  strong  for  him.  The  result 
shows  in  that  want  of  fine  texture  and  harmonious  tone  for 
which  his  work  is  often  criticised.  Nothing,  for  example, 
could  well  be  better  than  the  first  paragraph  of  the  essay 
On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners;  and,  so  far  as  a 
sense  for  harmony  of  style  is  concerned,  few  things  could  be 
worse  than  the  fourteenth  paragraph  of  the  same  essay.  The 
balances  of  dignity,  refinement,  grace,  pathos,  and  all  the 
qualities  that  make  for  beauty  and  elevation,  are  too  often 
wanting.  In  these  things  the  great  English  humorists  of  his 
century,  Lamb  and  De  Quincey,  are  both  his  superiors. 

Somewhat  similar  defects  attach  to  the  substance  of  his 
essays.  The  discursive  essays,  those  that  pretend  to  little 
beyond  entertainment,  make  some  of  the  most  delightful 
reading  in  modern  letters.  It  is  impossible  to  resist  their 
varied  charms,  all  going  back  to  the  author's  magnetic 
personality.  And  much  the  same  is  true  of  the  more  serious 
essays.  But  these  latter  suffer  in  their  lack  of  centrality, 
of  a  guiding  principle  and  a  definite  purpose.  Lowell's  best 
poetry  came  of  profound  convictions;  but  when  later  in  life 
he  turned  to  the  writing  of  prose,  he  was  not  inspired  by  the 
same  sort  of  convictions — he  wrote  as  a  professional  journalist 
rather  because  he  found  that  he  could  than  because  he  felt 
that  he  must.  Only  perhaps,  in  one  or  two  addresses  of  his 
last  years,  like  Democracy,  is  it  possible  to  discern  behind  the 


230  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

written  or  spoken  utterance  the  kind  of  concentration  that 
has  lifted  into  such  clear  light  the  names  of  Carlyle,  Emerson, 
Ruskin,  and  Arnold.  His  criticism  at  its  best  is  constantly  in 
danger  of  degenerating  into  witticism;  at  its  worst  it  is-  un 
sympathetic  and  unsound,  as  when  it  confronts  certain  pet 
aversions  like  Petrarch,  Swinburne,  or  Thoreau. 

To  quarrel  with  the  method,  however,  is  not  to  condemn 
the  man.  Lowell  rarely  professes  to  set  up  standards — he 
will  not  sink  the  poet  in  the  critic.  If  we  will  accept  him 
for  what  he  is,  a  kind  of  eighteenth  century  critic  fortified 
with  nineteenth  century  learning,  browsing  in  the  fields  of 
literature  when  and  where  he  pleases,  resolved  to  like  with  a 
zest  and  to  dislike  with  a  zest,  and  even  to  trample  under  foot 
what  is  not  to  his  taste,  we  shall  get  our  profit  from  him.  His 
insight  always  keeps  pace  with  his  sympathy.  A  late  writer 
on  style,  Mr.  Walter  Raleigh,  has  said:  "The  main  business 
of  criticism,  after  all,  is  not  to  legislate,  but  to  raise  the  dead." 
Just  so  far  as  this  is  true,  Lowell  is  a  great  critic.  The  writers 
whom  he  loves  he  makes  live  again.  Taken  all  in  all,  there 
fore,  as  critic  and  as  poet,  we  know  pretty  clearly  how  to  esti 
mate  him, — not,  perhaps,  as  our  greatest  scholar,  certainly 
not  as  our  greatest  man  of  letters,  but  as  our  best  example  of 
the  two  combined.  Or  if  Longfellow  and  Holmes  be  allowed 
to  share  in  this  pre-eminence,  we  may  yet  add  to  Lowell's 
credit  a  devotion  to  national  and  moral  principles  like  that  of 
Whittier,  which  joins  to  the  breadth  of  his  character  a  depth 
they  can  scarcely  claim. 

OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES,  1809-1894 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  another  native  of  Cambridge, 

who,  however,  opened  his  eyes  upon  the  beauty  of  its  elms 

nearly  ten  years  before  Lowell.     He  was  born  in 

the  prolific  first  decade  of  the  century, — in  the 

year  1809,  made  memorable  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  by 


HOLMES  231 

the  births  of  Lincoln,  Poe,  Tennyson,  Darwin,  and  Gladstone. 
His  grandfather  was  a  captain  in  the  "Old  French  War"  and 
a  surgeon  in  the  Revolutionary  army.  His  father,  Abiel 
Holmes,  was  a  Congregational  minister  at  Cambridge  and  an 
author  in  a  modest  way.  On  his  mother's  side — the  Wendells 
— he  was  of  Dutch  descent.  On  this  side,  too,  he  counted 
among  his  ancestors  that  "tenth  Muse"  who  sprang  up  in 
America  nearly  two  centuries  before,  Mistress  Anne  Brad- 
street;  but  as  she  was  only  one  of  his  sixty-four  great-great- 
great-great-grandparents,  the  Bradstreet  poetry  that  flowed 
in  his  veins,  thin  to  begin  with,  must  have  been  but  the 
weakest  trace — a  homeopathic  high-dilution  that  the  Doctor, 
with  all  his  faith  in  heredity,  would  probably  have  laughed 
to  scorn. 

There  is  almost  nothing  of  note  to  be  recorded  of  his  boy 
hood,  nor  indeed  of  any  period  of  his  life.  He  was  brought 
up  very  simply  in  the  old  gambrel-roofed  house,  half  parson 
age,  half  farmhouse,  described  in  The  Poet  at  the 
Manh^d.*1  Breakfast  Table;  heard  the  rustic  Yankee  dialect 
used  by  the  hired  "help"  of  the  family — "nater" 
for  nature,  "haowsen"  for  houses,  and  "musicianers"  for 
musicians;  read  the  New  England  Primer,  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
Pope's  Homer,  and  such  poems  of  Gray,  Cowper,  Bryant, 
Drake,  etc.,  as  were  to  be  found  in  school  books;  showed 
some  ingenuity  in  working  with  tools;  went  to  a  "dame's 
school"  first,  and  then  to  Phillips  Academy  at  Andover 
(see  The  School-Boy),  whence  he  should  have  become  a 
minister  like  his  father  but  did  not;  and  finally  to  Harvard, 
where  he  was  undecided  whether  to  look  toward  "law  or 
physick,"  but  very  decided  that  authorship  was  not  suited  to 
that  particular  meridian.  The  class  of  '29,  in  which  he 
graduated,  while  not  to  be  compared  for  literary  genius  with 
the  Bowdoin  class  of  '25,  was  one  of  Harvard's  most  famous 
classes.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  over  whom  Holmes  was 


232  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

chosen  class  poet,  was  one  of  its  members,  and  the  future 
author  of  America  was  another — the  youngster  whom  "fate 
tried  to  conceal  by  naming  him  Smith."  The  class  not  long 
after  began  to  hold  annual  dinners,  and  Holmes  was  regularly 
called  upon  to  furnish  an  ode  for  the  occasion.  It  was  on  the 
thirtieth  anniversary  that  he  wrote  and  recited  the  familiar 
poem,  "Has  there  any  old  fellow  got  mixed  with  the  boys." 
After  graduation  he  studied  law  for  a  while  and  then  turned 
to  medicine  and  surgery — a  choice  which  made  it  advisable 
for  him  to  spend  some  time  in  the  hospitals  of  Europe.  He 
accordingly  passed  two  years  in  study  at  Paris,  travelling  a 
little  about  Europe  during  vacations.  The  year  1836 
found  him  equipped  with  his  doctor's  degree  and  established 
in  an  office  at  Boston.  Two  years  later  he  received  an 
appointment  to  the  Professorship  of  Anatomy  at  Dartmouth 
College,  and  he  lectured  there  for  several  terms.  In  1840  he 
married.  In  1847  he  was  appointed  Professor  of  Anatomy 
and  Physiology  in  the  Harvard  Medical  School,  and  he  re 
mained  on  the  Harvard  Faculty  for  thirty-five  years.  As  he 
gave  instruction  also  in  microscopy  and  psychology  he  used 
to  say  that  he  occupied,  not  a  professor's  chair,  but  a  whole 
settee.  In  these  duties  he  found  his  life  work,  less  as  a 
practitioner  than  as  an  investigator,  teacher,  and  writer  in 
his  chosen  profession.  Some  of  his  contributions  to  medical 
science  were  of  the  highest  value,  one  in  particular  establish 
ing  the  contagious  character  of  a  certain  fever. 

Until  the  launching  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  well  after 
the  middle  of  the  century,  literature  played  but  a  minor 
Earl  verse  part  *n  Holmes's  life.  He  delivered  a  course  of 
lectures  on  the  English  poets  before  the  Lowell 
Institute,  and  he  also  went  out  occasionally,  like  Emerson  and 
Lowell,  on  the  Lyceum  platform.  In  his  college  days  he  had 
written  verses  for  girls'  albums,  and  he  had  been  class  poet; 
but  it  was  only  in  the  year  after  his  graduation,  when  he  was 


HOLMES  233 

asked  by  the  undergraduates  to  contribute  to  a  college  paper, 
that  his  verses  went  into  type,  and  then,  he  says,  he  had  his 
first  attack  of  "lead-poisoning."  It  was  in  September  of  that 
year,  1830,  that  he  chanced  to  read  in  a  newspaper  of  the 
proposal  of  the  Navy  Department  to  dismantle  the  frigate 
Constitution,  which  had  done  such  good  service  in  1812, 
but  which  was  then  lying,  old  and  unseaworthy,  in  the  navy 
yard  at  Charleston.  He  wrote  at  once  with  a  lead-pencil  on 
a  scrap  of  paper  the  stirring  and  indignant  stanzas,  Old 
Ironsides,  and  sent  them  to  the  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 
They  were  copied  in  all  the  papers  of  the  country,  and  the 
feeling  aroused  was  so  strong  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
who  of  course  had  been  guilty  of  nothing  but  a  want  of  senti 
ment,  allowed  the  "tattered  ensign"  to  remain  and  the  frig 
ate  was  converted  into  a  school-ship.  And  thus  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  a  meek-minded,  modest-mannered,  under 
sized  law  student  just  turned  twenty-one,  became  measurably 
noted  as  a  poet.  Six  years  later,  when  he  began  his  medical 
practice  in  Boston,  he  published  a  small  volume  of  verse, 
containing  of  course  Old  Ironsides,  together  with  a  few  such 
ever-delightful  poems  as  The  Dilemma  and  My  Aunt,  and  best 
of  all,  The  Last  Leaf.  This  was  the  year  of  Emerson's  Nature, 
the  year  before  Hawthorne's  Twice-Told  Tales,  and  three 
years  before  Longfellow's  Voices  of  the  Night.  From  this 
time  on  the  poetic  record  was  a  slight  but  steady  one.  Every 
year  brought  its  occasions  and  inspiration  for  verse,  and 
every  decade,  more  or  less,  found  the  verse  gathered  into  a 
volume,  which  was  treasured  by  the  Doctor's  many  friends 
and  plundered  freely  by  school-readers  for  the  sake  of  de 
claiming  school  children  all  over  the  land.  If  this  was  fame, 
the  name  of  Holmes  already  belonged  on  the  roll  of  American 
men  of  letters. 

But  Holmes,  while  he  had  a  genuine  gift  of  song,  was  no 
such  persistent  singer  as  Longfellow    and  no  such  poet  by 


234  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

native  compulsion  as  Bryant,  Poe,  and  Whittier,  and  so  he 
reached  almost  the  age  of  fifty  without  feeling  that  he  had 
"The  any  particular  claim  on  the  reading  public,  or  the 

?abaiefslries  "reading  Public  on  nim-  Then,  in  1857,  came 
the  publisher's  dinner  described  some  pages 
back,  and  the  resulting  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  he  had  the 
good  fortune  to  name.  Lowell  would  accept  the  editorship  of 
the  magazine  only  on  condition  that  Holmes  would  contribute 
and  the  result  was  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  papers 

papers  that  did  more  than  any  other  one  thing  to  establish 

the  high  character  of  the  magazine  and  to  assure  its  success. 
He  was  before  the  public  in  a  new  r6le,  and  one  in  which  he 
never  afterward  lost  favor,  no  matter  how  often  he  assumed 
it.  It  is  rarely  that  talk,  of  the  breakfast  table  or  whatever 
kind,  looks  well  on  paper.  Many  an  eloquent  speaker,  and 
many  a  brilliant  converser,  has  taken  up  the  pen  in  vain. 
Dr.  Holmes  was  a  really  brilliant  and  witty  talker.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  famous  Saturday  Club,  which  still  exists,  and 
which  whether  it  grew  out  of  that  publisher's  dinner  or 
whether  it  originated  with  Emerson  and  several  admirers 
who  occasionally  dined  together  at  the  Parker  House, 
became  a  fixed  feature  of  Boston  literary  life  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Atlantic  and  gathered  into  its  coterie  almost  the 
whole  galaxy  of  New  England  wit,  learning,  and  genius. 
Of  this  galaxy  the  bright  particular  stars  were  Lowell  and 
Holmes,  and  Holmes  doubtless  shone  writh  the  rarer  lustre. 
The  club  became  the  centre  of  his  social  existence,  one  of  the 
fixed  joys  of  his  life,  and  without  him  it  would  have  been 
deprived  of  one  of  its  best  excuses  for  being.  Now,  the 
kind  of  talk  in  which  he  delighted  there  and  of  which  he 
showed  himself  so  easily  master,  he  succeeded  in  transfer 
ring,  almost  without  loss,  to  paper.  To  be  admitted  to  the 
presence  of  such  a  talker  as  he  was,  was  the  chance  of  a 
lifetime,  and  readers  of  the  Autocrat  became  suddenly 


HOLMES  235 

aware  that  this  chance  had  come,  as  it  were,  to  their  doors. 

"Don't  I  read  up  various  matters  to  talk  about  at  this  table  or 
elsewhere? — No,  that  is  the  last  thing  I  would  do.  I  will  tell  you  my 
rule.  Talk  about  those  subjects  you  have  had  long  in  your  mind,  and 
listen  to  what  others  say  about  subjects  you  have  studied  but  re 
cently.  Knowledge  and  timber  shouldn't  be  much  used  till  they  are 
seasoned. 

"What  do  I  mean  by  the  real  talkers? — Why,  the  people  with 
fresh  ideas,  of  course,  and  plenty  of  good  warm  words  to  dress  them 
in.  Facts  always  yield  the  place  of  honor,  in  conversation,  to  thoughts 
about  facts;  but  if  a  false  note  is  uttered,  down  comes  the  finger  on  the 
key  and  the  man  of  facts  asserts  his  true  dignity.  I  have  known  three 
of  these  men  of  facts,  at  least,  who  were  always  formidable, — and  one 
of  them  was  tyrannical. 

"Yes,  a  man  sometimes  makes  a  grand  appearance  on  a  particular 
occasion,  but  these  men  knew  something  about  almost  everything, 
and  never  made  mistakes. — He?  Veneers  in  first-rate  style.  The 
mahogany  scales  off  now  and  then  in  spots,  and  then  you  see  the  cheap 

light  stuff. — I  found very  fine  in  conversational  information,  the 

other  day,  when  we  were  in  company.  The  talk  ran  upon  mountains. 
He  was  wonderfully  well  acquainted  with  the  leading  facts  about  the 
Andes,  the  Apennines,  and  the  Appalachians;  he  had  nothing  in  particu 
lar  to  say  about  Ararat,  Ben  Nevis,  and  various  other  mountains  that 
were  mentioned.  By  and  by  some  Revolutionary  anecdote  came  up, 
and  he  showed  singular  familiarity  writh  the  lives  of  the  Adamses,  and 
gave  many  details  relating  to  Major  Andre.  A  point  of  Natural 
History  being  suggested,  he  gave  an  excellent  account  of  the  air-bladder 
of  fishes.  He  was  very  full  upon  the  subject  of  agriculture,  but  retired 
from  the  conversation  when  horticulture  was  introduced  in  the  dis 
cussion.  So  he  seemed  well  acquainted  with  the  geology  of  anthracite, 
but  did  not  pretend  to  know  anything  of  other  kinds  of  coal.  There 
was  something  so  odd  about  the  extent  and  limitations  of  his  knowledge, 
that  I  suspected  all  at  once  what  might  be  the  meaning  of  it,  and  waited 
till  I  got  an  opportunity. — Have  you  seen  the  'New  American  Cyclo 
paedia?'  said  I. — I  have,  he  replied;  I  received  an  early  copy. — How 
far  does  it  go? — He  turned  red,  and  answered, — To  Araguay. — Oh,  said 
I  to  myself, — not  quite  so  far  as  Ararat;; — that  is  the  reason  he  knew 
nothing  about  it;  but  he  must  have  read  all  the  rest  straight  through, 
and,  if  he  can  remember  what  is  in  this  volume  until  he  has  read  all  those 
that  are  to  come,  he  will  know  more  than  I  ever  thought  he  would." 


236  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

But  here,  too,  as  in  the  case  of  Lowell's  essays,  it  is  prac 
tically  impossible  to  give  by  quotation  any  fair  idea  of  the 
work.  It  is  not  simply  that  there  is  an  embarrassment  of 
riches,  tempting  one  to  quote  from  whatever  page  he  may 
open,  but  that  a  good  part  of  the  charm  lies  in  the  endless 
variety  of  the  matter,  a  quality  which  cannot  be  exhibited  in 
an  extract.  The  author  turns  lightly  from  subject  to  sub 
ject,  always  suggesting  something  new  or  illuminating 
something  old,  and  touching  each  as  he  passes  with  his 
humor  or  his  pathos.  Perhaps  George  William  Curtis  has 
best  described  it — "the  restless  hovering  of  that  brilliant 
talk  over  every  topic,  fancy,  feeling,  fact;  a  humming-bird 
sipping  the  one  honeyed  drop  from  every  flower."  The 
humor  is  as  unfailing  as  Lowell's  and  is  generally  of  a  finer 
quality.  Poetry,  too,  was  not  barred  from  his  scheme,  and 
many  of  his  best  poems  are  to  be  found  interspersed  among  the 
pages  of  The  Autocrat.  One  is  The  Deacon's  Masterpiece,  the 
tale  of  the  wonderful  "one-hoss  shay;"  another  is  the  allegory 
of  The  Chambered  Nautilus,  which  was  Dr.  Holmes's  own 
favorite  among  his  poems — a  notable  poem,  indeed,  in  every 
respect,  in  beauty  of  imagery,  in  construction,  and  in  the  lyric 
sweep  and  lofty  aspiration  of  its  often  quoted  final  stanza, — 

"Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll! 

Leave  thy  low- vaulted  past! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  Life's  unresting  sea!" 

The  Autocrat  had  once  declared  that  he  thought  himself 
"fortunate  in  having  the  Poet  and  the  Professor  for  inti 
mates;"  and  in  good  time  the  Poet  and  the  Professor  were 
allowed  to  appear.  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table 
began  quaintly  enough:  "The  question  is  whether  there  is 


HOLMES  237 

anything  left  for  me,  the  Professor,  to  suck  out  of  creation, 
after  my  lively  friend  (the  Autocrat)  has  had  his  straw  in  the 
bung-hole  of  the  universe."  But  creation  is  pretty  extensive, 
and  so  seemed  to  be  Dr.  Holmes's  ability  to  draw  on  its  stores. 
This  was  in  1859.  Thirteen  years  later  the  Poet  took  his  seat 
at  the  breakfast  table,  and  still  the  universe  showed  no  signs 
of  being  sucked  dry.  The  second  and  third  tappings  lacked  a 
little  of  the  pristine  flavor,  that  was  all.  The  Professor,  for 
example,  was  a  trifle  grave  and  over-given  to  theological 
discussions ;  yet  the  pathetic  death-scene  of  the  Little  Gentle 
man  in  that  series  is  one  of  Holmes's  finest  passages. 

Running  through  the  Autocrat  papers  was  a  very  slender 
thread  of  romance  which  bound  them  into  a  kind  of  unity. 

Romances  ^  was  natura^  tnen  tnat  Holmes,  having  discov 
ered  his  power  and  facility  in  prose,  should  enter 
the  field  of  romance  proper.  Elsie  Venner  was  published 
in  1861,  The  Guardian  Angel  in  1867,  and  A  Mortal  Antip 
athy  in  1885.  These  stories  are  commonly  called  novels 
but  notwithstanding  their  elaborate  character  studies  and 
their  realistic  details  they  contain  so  much  of  mystery 
approaching  the  supernatural  that  they  are  rather  to  be 
classified  as  romances.  Dr.  Holmes  had  a  deep  interest  in 
the  problems  of  inherited  characteristics — an  interest  which 
sometimes  came  out  in  his  poems,  as  in  the  dainty  Dorothy 
Q. — and  he  made  this  largely  the  foundation  of  his  romances. 
But  the  scientist's,  and,  it  should  be  added,  the  moralist's 
interest  in  the  analysis  of  problems  interfered  sadly  with  the 
romancer's  art.  Yet  books  that  are  so  filled  with  Dr. 
Holmes's  personality,  no  one  can  call  failures.  The  Guardian 
Angel,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  books  that  no  one  who  begins  will 
lay  aside,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  to  be  taken  up  for  a  second 
reading.  Elsie  Venner,  the  story  of  the  girl  of  the  serpent 
charms,  cannot  be  accounted  so  successful,  though  it  has  a  pro 
found  spiritual  significance  and  it  has  been  more  widely  read. 


238  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

Holmes's  intellect  remained  bright  and  his  pen  was  kept 
active  into  extreme  old  age.     He  wrote  memoirs  of  Motley 

and  of  Emerson,  medical  essays,  literary  essays, 
Years.  and  poems.     He  made  a  second  visit  to  Europe, 

with  his  daughter,  in  1886,  when  he  was  honored 
with  a  doctor's  degree  by  the  universities  of  Oxford,  Cam 
bridge,  and  Edinburgh.     The  story  of  the  visit  was  written 
out  in  Our  Hundred  Days  in  Europe.     In  1890  he  published 
his  last  volume,  Over  the  Tea-Cups,  another  work  somewhat 
in  the  vein  of  the  Breakfast  Table  Series.     In  the  meantime 
he  had  continued  to  write  those  poems  which,  from  1851 
onward,  he  had  written  every  year  for  the  meeting  of  the 
class  of  '29.     Toward  the  end,  as  the  circle  became  smaller 
and  smaller,   the  poems  and  even  their  titles  grew  most 
pathetic:      Before  the  Curfew   (1882),  A   Loving-Cup  Song 
(1883),  The  Girdle  of  Friendship  (1884),  The  Lyre  of  Ana- 
creon  (1885),  The  Old  Tune,  Thirty-sixth  Variation  (1886), 
The  Broken  Circle  (1887),  The  Angel  Thief  (1888),  After  the 
Curfew  (1889).     "After  the  Curfew"  wrote  Samuel  May  to 
F.  J.  Garrison,  "was  positively  the  last.     'Farewell!     I  let 
the  curtain  fall.'     The  curtain  never  rose  again  for    '29. 
We  met  once  more— a  year  later— at  Parker's.     But  three 
were   present,    Smith,    Holmes,    and   myself.     No   poem— 
very  quiet— something  very  like. tears.     The  following  meet 
ings—all  at  Dr.  H.'s  hous^-were  quiet,  social,  talking  meet 
ings.     ...     At  one  of  these  meetings  four  were  present, 
all  the  survivors  but  one;  and  there  was  more  general  talk. 
But   never   another   Class   Poem."     The   class-mates   were 
nearly  all  gone.     Gone,  too,  were  his  literary  co-workers, 
Longfellow,  Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Whittier.     Holmes  had 
actually  lived  to  be 

"The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree." 

He  died  October  the  seventh,  1894. 


HOLMES  239 

"Rhymes  of  an  Hour"  is  the  title  Dr.  Holmes  once  gave  to 
a  little  group  of  his  poems.  The  title  was  not  given  with  any 
A  writer  of  false  assumption  of  modesty :  it  was  a  real  charac- 
and^lumor-  terization  of  what  he  knew  to  be  trivial  and  transi- 
ous  verse.  torv  verse  Qn  everv  public  or  semi-public 

occasion  which  could  be  enlivened  or  dignified  by  a  special 
poem,  and  there  were  very  many  such  in  and  about  Boston, 
Dr.  Holmes  was  likely  to  be  asked  to  furnish  the  poem.  Such 
a  position  is  a  trying  one  at  best,  but  one,  fortunately,  to 
which  only  men  with  some  sense  of  humor  are  often  called. 
Holmes  rarely  refused  to  respond;  so  that  nearly  one-half  of 
his  verse  is  of  this  occasional  character.  He  knew  very  well 
that  the  verse  was  not  "booked  for  immortality."  He  allowed 
it  to  stand  in  his  collected  works  along  with  a  good  deal  of 
youthful  nonsense,  like  The  Spectre  Pig,  which  a  poet  who 
took  himself  more  seriously  would,  out  of  jealousy  for  his 
fame,  have  suppressed.  Yet  to  be  able  to  write  good 
occasional  verse  is  a  rare  accomplishment,  even  if  not  a  very 
high  one.  Our  poets  wTho  have  tried  to  write  odes  for  great 
and  serious  occasions,  centennial  and  the  like,  have  seldom 
succeeded,  the  chief  exceptions  being  Emerson's  Concord 
Hymn,  which  was  modestly  meant,  and  Lowell's  Commem 
oration  Ode,  behind  which  there  was  deep  personal  feeling. 
In  general,  Holmes  wrote  for  much  lighter  occasions,  and  it 
must  be  said  that  he  succeeded.  Whether  it  was  Bryant's 
seventieth  birthday,  or  Longfellow's  departure  for  Europe,  or 
a  dinner  to  General  Grant,  or  the  dedication  of  a  monument, 
or  the  founding  of  a  hospital,  the  poem  was  freely  given  and 
was  sure  to  be  worthy  of  the  occasion.  Sometimes  it  rose  to 
real  distinction.  The  series  of  over  forty  poems  written  for 
the  reunions  of  his  class  becomes  impressive  in  its  length  and 
modulation — one  song,  as  it  w^ere,  in  many  keys.  At  the 
Saturday  Club  gives  us  the  finest  pictures  we  shall  ever  get 
of  the  real  Longfellow,  Agassiz,  Hawthorne,  and  Emerson, 


240  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

as  they  were  among  their  associates.  Horace  wrote  oc 
casional  poems  that  are  immortal:  Holmes,  once  or  twice, 
came  near  it. 

Light  verse  was  clearly  his  forte.  His  frankly  humorous 
poems,  like  The  Deacon's  Masterpiece,  Parson  TurelVs  Legacy, 
and  How  the  Old  Horse  Won  the  Bet,  have  always  held  a  high 
place.  In  the  so-called  society  verse,  that  professedly  trivial 
verse  on  trivial  subjects,  which  demands  such  a  light  touch 
and  which  yet  runs  often  close  to  seriousness,  he  has  had  no 
competitor  in  America  unless  it  be  Mr.  Aldrich,  and  only  one 
forerunner — the  almost  forgotten  Philip  Freneau.  Poems  of 
this  class  are  The  First  Fan,  La  Grisette,  Our  Yankee  Girls, 
The  Dilemma,  My  Aunt,  and  that  playfully  reverent  poem 
on  an  old  portrait  of  one  of  his  Quincy  ancestors  in  her  girl 
hood — Dorothy  Q. 

A  poet's  final  place,  however,  is  most  likely  to  be  deter 
mined  by  his  serious  work.  Holmes's  entirely  serious  work 
is  not  large  in  amount,  and  it  includes  no  long 
LySs£ume  poems.  There  are  a  few  patriotic  poems,  but  he 
left  nothing  better  in  this  kind  than  the  declama 
tory  Old  Ironsides.  He  struck  a  surer  note  in  the  tender 
themes  of  Under  the  Violets  and  The  Voiceless;  the  latter, 
indeed,  has  attained  almost  as  wide  a  familiarity  as  any  of 
Longfellow's  lyrics: — 

"We  count  the  broken  lyres  that  rest 

Where  the  sweet  wailing  singers  slumber, 
But  o'er  their  silent  sister's  breast 

The  wild-flowers  who  will  stoop  to  number? 
A  few  can  touch  the  magic  string, 

And  noisy  Fame  is  proud  to  win  them: — 
Alas  for  those  that  never  sing, 

But  die  with  all  their  music  in  them!" 


HOLMES  241 

But  surest  of  all  in  their  hold  on  the  future  are  The  Last  Leaf 
and  The  Chambered  Nautilus.  Which  is  the  greater,  it 
is  idle  to  ask.  This  distinction  may  be  noted.  The  Cham 
bered  Nautilus,  with  all  its  lofty  reach  and  perfect  finish,  is  a 
meditative  poem  not  materially  different  in  character  from 
half  a  hundred  other  famous  lyrics  in  our  language.  On  the 
other  hand,  The  Last  Leaf  is  like  an  instantaneous  photograph 
that  has  caught  something  never  to  be  caught  again.  We 
prize  it  because  it  is  a  unique  addition  to  literature,  unlike 
anything  save  its  imitations : — 

"I  saw  him  once  before, 
As  he  passed  by  the  door, 

And  again 

The  pavement  stones  resound, 
As  he  totters  o'er  the  ground 

With  his  cane." 

It  is  a  picture  only,  a  "silhouette"  Mr.  Stedman  has  happily 
called  it,  but  the  quaint  staccato  movement  throws  the 
picture  into  such  sharp  relief  that  it  takes  on  the  very  attri 
butes  of  life. 

Of  his  prose  perhaps  enough  has  been  said.  It  was  the 
prose  that  made  Holmes  distinctly  a  man  of  letters ;  it  was  the 
A  Ph'i  prose  that  absorbed  the  best  literary  energies  of 

^s  mature  years  and  possibly  kept  him  from 
producing  any  poetic  masterpiece  such  as  Whittier 
wrote  in  Snow-Bound.  But  The  Autocrat  is  masterpiece 
enough.  At  one  time  or  another  Holmes  has  been  compared 
to  most  of  the  great  writers  of  discursive  prose  in  modern 
literature,  and  there  is  probably  some  measure  of  truth  in 
each  comparison.  He  remains  peculiarly  our  own,  almost 
to  provincialism;  concentrated  New  Englandism,  with  only 
the  Puritan  element  subtracted,  is  Dr.  Holmes.  But  he  be 
longs  to  a  company  that  is  of  many  nationalities,  a  company 
of  sage  philosophers  and  shrewd  humorists,  who,  under  cover 


242  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

of  giving  amusement,  afford  unsuspected  intellectual  stim 
ulus  and  add  to  the  practical  wisdom  of  their  generation. 

MINOR  POETRY  AND  MISCELLANEOUS  PROSE 

As  we  approach  our  own  time  the  distinction  between 
major  and  minor  men  becomes  more  and  more  difficult  to 
draw.  The  next  generation  may  overturn  our  judgments. 
Even  now,  as  we  look  back  upon  the  nineteenth  century,  wTe 
seem  to  see  Bryant,  for  instance,  receding  from  the  eminence 
which  he  once  held  into  a  position  of  chiefly  historical  im 
portance.  And  we  see  Thoreau,  for  another  instance,  coming 
gradually  into  a  wider  acceptance,  though  still  very  far 
from  holding  a  secure  place  among  writers  of  the  first  order. 
Even  more  doubtful  is  the  position  of  one  for  whom  a  special 
criticism  must  yet  be  reserved  in  these  pages — Walt  Whit 
man.  But  if  names  like  these  can  be  advanced  to  a  con 
spicuous  position  only  with  caution,  it  seems  pretty  clear 
that  such  a  position  cannot  be  conceded  to  any  of  the  many 
yet  unnamed.  At  the  same  time  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
a  few,  as  Bayard  Taylor  in  poetry  and  Hale  and  Curtis  in 
prose,  have  done  work  that  is  not  far  below  the  enduring 
kind.  It  is  these  and  their  fellow  craftsmen  that  we  must 
now  endeavor  to  view  in  such  perspective  as  the  criticism 
of  forty  years  or  less  enables  us  to  obtain. 

Among  the  poets  of  New  England,  as  it  happens,  the  dis 
tinction  between  major  and  minor  is  sharply  enough  drawn, 
w.  w.  story,  The  men  of  real  talent  but  of  relatively  weak 
T.V.  Parsons,P°etic  impulse  seem  to  have  been  willing  to  resign 
c81E." Norton,  the  office  of  singing  to  Emerson  and  Whittier  and 
>08"  the  Cambridge  group,  pursuing  for  the  most  part 
other  occupations.  William  Wetmore  Story  and  Thomas 
William  Parsons,  both  of  whom  were  born  in  the  same  year  as 
Lowell,  were  examples  of  such  men.  They  at  least  did  their 
share  toward  sustaining  the  reputation  which  Boston  has 


MINOR   POETRY   AND    MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE      243 

held  since  the  time  of  Washington  Allston,  as  a  centre  of 
literary  scholarship  and  art.  Story,  a  native  of  Salem  and  a 
graduate  of  Harvard,  spent  only  his  early  manhood  at  Bos 
ton;  the  latter  half  of  his  life  was  passed  at  Rome,  where  he 
devoted  himself  chiefly  to  sculpture.  Among  his  works  in 
sculpture  are  a  statue  of  his  father,  Judge  Story,  and  a  bust 
of  his  friend,  Lowell.  Several  of  Lowell's  early  essays 
were  written  in  the  form  of  letters  addressed  to  "My  Dear 
Storg"  (i.e.,  Story).  His  writings  include  poems,  a  drama,  a 
novel,  and  miscellaneous  prose.  Parsons  was  born  at  Boston 
and  spent  most  of  his  life  there.  A  period  of  travel  and 
study  in  Italy  resulted  in  his  admirable  rhymed  translation 
(1843,  extended  in  1867)  of  some  cantos  of  Dante's  Divine 
Comedy.  His  original  poetry  is  grave  and  noble,  and  his 
Lines  on  a  Bust  of  Dante  take  rank,  with  scholars  at  least,  as 
an  American  classic.  Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  of  Har 
vard,  though  not  a  poet,  may  also  be  mentioned  here  as  an 
associate  of  the  Cambridge  poets  and  himself  a  scholar  and 
translator  of  Dante  and  an  authority  on  art. 

To  these  may  be  added  several  writers  of  occasional 
poems.     As  far  back  as  1832,  Samuel  Francis  Smith,  a  Bos 
ton  clergyman  and  a  classmate  of  Holmes,  wrote 
1808-1895.  '    America  ("My  Country,  'tis  of  Thee"),  in  which 

Julia  Ward  ... 

Howe,  patriotic    and    religious    sentiments    combine    to 

1819-l910«  •  i    i  "XT         i          i  * 

make  a  worthy  national  hymn.  Nearly  thirty 
years  later  another  hymn  that  has  risen  to  the  distinction  of 
being  called  national  was  written  by  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe. 
She  was  a  native  of  New  York  who  at  the  time  of  her  marriage 
took  up  her  residence  in  Boston  and  wrote  as  a  journalist 
there  in  the  interest  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  and  other 
reforms.  Her  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic  (1861)  was 
inspired  by  seeing  the  troops  in  the  camps  near  Washington 
marching  to  the  song  of  John  Brown's  Body.  Other  poets 
who  might  here  be  mentioned — John  G.  Saxe,  for  instance, 


244  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

the  Vermont  lawyer  and  humorist,  or  Lucy  Larcom,  the 
the  Massachusetts  mill-girl  and  writer  for  young  people — are 
fast  being  forgotten. 

Of  the  New  England  writers  of  prose,  two  or  three  who 
outlived  the  century  and  with  it  most  of  their  early  asso 
ciates,  are  still  rather  to  be  regarded  as  belonging 

K.    Jl/. 


2    ^  to  the  old  sch°o1-     One  is  Edward  Everett  Hale, 


Tw 


fcsin- 
3- 


son,  1823-       who,  in  his  long  career  as  a  Boston  clergyman, 


managed  not  only  to  identify  himself  with  many 

. 

philanthropic  projects  but  also  to  produce  a 
large  amount  of  miscellaneous  writing  —  historical,  fictitious, 
moral,  and  discursive.  His  widely  known  patriotic  tale,  The 
Man  Without  a  Country,  was  published  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  in  1863.  Another  is  Thomas  Wentworth  Higgin- 
son,  who  also,  in  his  early  life  was  a  Massachusetts  clergyman. 
He  was  an  ardent  opponent  of  slavery  and  served  in  the  war 
as  colonel  of  the  first  colored  regiment.  His  works  comprise 
essays,  biographies,  histories,  poems,  and  romances.  Yet  a 
third  is  Donald  Grant  Mitchell,  of  Connecticut,  who,  under 
the  name  of  "Ik  Marvel,"  published  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor 
(1850)  and  Dream  Life  (1851).  These  "contemplative  views 
of  life  from  the  slippered  ease  of  the  chimney-corner"  were 
among  the  most  popular  books  of  the  middle  of  the  century, 
but  their  tender  vein  of  sentiment  finds  little  place  in  an  age 
of  the  scientific  passion  and  "the  strenuous  life."  All  three 
of  these  men  published  personal  reminiscences  —  Dr.  Hale  in 
James  Russell  Lowell  and  His  Friends,  Colonel  Higginson  in 
Old  Cambridge,  and  Mr.  Mitchell  in  American  Lands  and 
Letters  —  volumes  that  are  peculiarly  rich  in  anecdotes  and 
other  helps  to  the  understanding  of  literary  life  and  character 
in  the  East  before  and  during  the  war. 

Comparable  in  many  ways  to  this  secondary  New  Eng 
land  group  was  a  group  of  poets  and  prose  writers  whose 
work  was  done  in  the  region  that  centres  in  New  York  and 


MINOR   POETRY   AND    MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE     245 

Philadelphia.  There,  however,  the  poets  that  followed 
immediately  in  the  wake  of  the  "Knickerbockers"  mentioned 
in  an  earlier  chapter  rose  to  rather  more  prominence  than  the 
secondary  poets  of  New  England,  for  in  this  region  there  was 
no  such  overshadowing  by  great  names,  Poe  having  passed 
early  from  the  stage  and  Bryant  never  having  cultivated  very 
actively  his  poetic  gift.  Four  of  these  poets,  of  nearly  the 
same  age,  were  closely  associated — Thomas  Buchanan  Read, 
George  Henry  Boker,  Bayard  Taylor,  and  Richard  Henry 
Stoddard. 

Read  and  Boker  were  chiefly  identified  with  Philadelphia. 
The  former  was  a  painter  of  some  note,  and  among  his  paint 
ings  are  a  portrait  of  Sheridan  and  his  horse,  and  one  of 
T.B.Read,  Longfellow's  children.  He  published,  from  1847 
^H/loker,  onward,  various  volumes  of  poems,  such  as  The 
1823-1890.  pjew  pasioral^  sketches  of  emigrant  life  from  mid 
dle  Pennsylvania  to  the  Mississippi,  and  The  Wagoner  of  the 
Alleghanies,  a  poem  of  Revolutionary  days.  He  is  best  known 
however,  by  the  short  poems,  Sheridan  s  Ride,  and  Drifting 
("My  soul  today  Is  far  away").  Boker  was  a  dramatist, 
and,  until  very  lately,  virtually  the  only  American  writer  of 
plays  that  have  met  with  favor  both  as  literature  and  on  the 
stage.  His  Calaynos  (1848)  and  Francesca  da  Rimini  (1856) 
are  blank  verse  tragedies  of  a  very  respectable  kind.  Among 
his  minor  poems  are  The  Ballad  of  Sir  John  Franklin,  The 
Black  Regiment,  and  Dirge  for  a  Soldier  ("Close  his  eyes;  his 
work  is  done!"). 

Easily  chief  of  this  group  and  demanding  therefore  a  more 
extended  consideration  was  Bayard  Taylor,  who  has  some 
times  indeed  been  classed  with  our  poets  of  the 
Tlyfor,          first  order.     He,  too,  was  a  Pennsylvanian,  though 

1825-1878.  ..      .  ,  ,  . 

most  of  his  journalistic  work  was  done  in  connec 
tion  with  the  papers  of  New  York.  He  began  life  as  a  prin 
ter's  apprentice  with  two  ambitions — to  travel  and  ta  become 


246  NATIONAL  LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

a  poet.  His  first  volume  of  poems  appeared  when  he  was 
but  nineteen;  and  in  the  same  year  (1844)  he  began  his  travels 
through  Germany  and  other  countries  of  Europe — on  foot, 
partly  because  he  had  not  the  means  to  go  otherwise.  His 
Views  Afoot,  a  prose  record  of  his  experiences,  published  in 
1846  with  a  preface  by  Willis,  fixed  his  reputation  and  entirely 
cleared  his  way  to  the  desired  life  of  travel  and  letters.  He 
was  among  the  gold  diggings  of  California  as  corresponding 
editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  in  1849;  returned  through 
Mexico  in  1850;  and  in  1851  went  again  to  Europe,  pene 
trating  thence  south  to  Sudan  and  the  White  Nile  and  east  to 
India,  China,  and  Japan.  Several  years  later  he  travelled 
through  the  north  of  Europe.  During  the  Civil  War  he  was 
made  secretary  of  the  legation  to  Russia.  He  afterward 
visited  Iceland  and  many  out-of-the-way  places  in  Europe. 
In  1878  he  was  appointed  United  States  Minister  to  Germany 
and  died  there  in  the  same  year.  "He  travelled  pen  in  his 
hand,"  said  his  friend  Boker;  "he  delivered  course  after 
course  of  lectures  in  the  brief  nightly  pauses  of  his  long  winter 
journeys;  he  wrote  novels,  he  wrote  editorials,  criticisms, 
letters,  and  miscellaneous  articles  for  the  magazines  and  the 
newspapers;  he  toiled  as  few  men  have  toiled  at  any  profession 
or  for  any  end,  and  he  wore  himself  out  and  perished  pre 
maturely  of  hard  and  sometimes  bitter  work."  That,  with 
all  his  accomplishment,  he  quite  realized  his  literary  ambition, 
would  be  too  much  to  say.  He  had  an  exalted  conception  of 
the  office  of  poet,  believing  that  poetry,  or  pure  imaginative 
creation,  was  the  highest  goal  toward  which  a  man  could 
strive,  and  he  strove  toward  it  with  a  heroism  that  compels 
admiration.  Hence,  perhaps,  the  fervent  encomiums  of  his 
many  friends.  But  his  friends  must  often  have  felt,  as  he 
doubtless  in  time  came  to  feel  himself,  that  his  work  was 
without  that  final  something  imparted  only  by  the  genius 
which  stands  above  both  consecrated  endeavor  and  noble 


MINOR   POETRY   AND    MISCELLANEOUS    PROSE     247 

ideals.  If  men  like  Emerson  have  had  the  blissful  uncon 
sciousness  of  genius,  men  like  Taylor  have  had  the  bitter 
consciousness  of  a  want  of  genius.  Yet  Taylor  became  a  poet 
and  a  writer  of  note;  in  the  days  of  his  productiveness  he  had 
the  warm  admiration  of  many  critical  readers;  and  he  left 
to  his  credit  a  body  of  work  of  wide  range  and  superior 
quality.  His  prose  sketches  go  to  swell  the  English  litera 
ture  of  travel  that  has  been  accumulating  since  the  days  of 
Sir  John  Mandeville.  His  dramas,  written  in  his  later  years, 
— The  Masque  of  the  Gods,  The  Prophet,  and  Prince  Deukalion, 
— are  among  the  best  specimens  of  the  closet  drama  that 
America  has  produced.  Poems  like  Lars,  a  Pastoral  of 
Norway,  the  Gettysburg  Ode,  and  the  National  Ode  (read  at  the 
Centennial  Exposition  on  Independence  Day),  are  worthy 
achievements.  And  there  are  two  or  three  short  poems 
which  have  won  a  wide  popular  approval,  such  as  the  Be 
douin  Song,  or  the  Song  of  the  Camp  with  its  familiar  close, — 
"The  bravest  are  the  tenderest, 
The  loving  are  the  daring." 

Taylor,  moreover,  was  one  of  that  remarkable  group  of  Amer 
ican  translators — Bryant,  Longfellow,  Taylor,  Cranch, 
Parsons,  and  Norton — who  between  1867  and  1872  gave  us 
translations  of  the  great  poems  of  Homer,  Vergil,  Dante,  and 
Goethe.  Taylor's  version  of  the  two  parts  of  Goethe's 
Faust,  in  the  metres  of  the  original,  was  published  in  1871-72. 
It  is  perhaps  enough  to  say  of  this  that  it  is  the  standard 
English  translation  of  Faust,  and  it  seems  likely  that  Taylor's 
fame  in  the  future  will  rest  more  securely  upon  it  than  upon 
his  original  work. 

The  fourth  of  this  group  of  poets  was  Richard  Henry 
Stoddard.  He  was  born  in  Massachusetts,  but  went  to 
New  York  in  boyhood,  where  he  got  his  education  in  the  pub 
lic  schools,  and,  in  the  intervals  of  work  in  an  iron  foundry, 
read  poetry  with  avidity.  Later  in  life  he  became  an  editor, 


248  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

and  worked  in  more  or  less  intimacy  with  Read,  Boker,  and 
Taylor,  and  the  somewhat  younger  Edmund  Clarence 
R  H  stod  Stedman.  His  earliest  poems  were  published  in 
i!!^'  3  1849 ;  volumes  of  more  note  were  Songs  of  Summer, 

1856,  The  King's  Bell,  1862,  and  The  Book  of  the 
East,  1871.  The  last  is  rich  in  oriental  coloring.  Stoddard 
was  never  a  "popular"  poet,  but  he  was  known  to  all  critical 
lovers  of  poetry  as  a  writer  whose  calling  was  high  and  whose 
instincts  were  sure.  Like  the  English  Landor,  he  united 
in  his  touch  rare  delicacy  and  strength.  The  former  quality 
is  most  apparent  in  such  a  work,  very  Greek  in  spirit,  as  The 
Fisher  and  Charon,  and  in  many  a  dainty  lyric  like  The  Divan 
and  the  imaginative  Persian  Songs  and  Tartar  Songs;  the 
latter,  in  his  stately  hymns  and  odes — Abraham  Lincoln, 
Hymn  to  the  Sea,  and  The  Dead  Master,  The  last  poem, 
written  in  memory  of  Bryant,  whom  Stoddard  greatly  ad 
mired,  contains  much  of  the  severe  majesty  of  Bryant's  best 
blank  verse. 

New  York  had  still  her  song  writers,  too,  though  none 
quite  to  equal  the  earlier  Payne,  Wood  worth,  and  Morris. 

The  Gary  sisters,  originally  from  Ohio,  published 
aSd%wigsers  various  volumes  of  verse  marked  by  grace,  melody, 

and  religious  sentiment.  Alice  (1820-1871)  was 
the  more  prolific  writer;  Phcebe  (1824-1871)  was  the  author 
of  the  widely  known  hymn  Nearer  Home.  Stephen  Collins 
Foster  (1826-1864),  who  was  born  at  Pittsburg,  was  a  music 
composer  and  the  author  of  a  large  number  of  idealized  negro 
melodies.  His  Old  Folks  at  Home  ("The  Suwanee  River"), 
My  Old  Kentucky  Home,  Nellie  Was  a  Lady,  Massa's  in  the 
Cold  Ground,  etc.,  have  passed  into  universal  currency  and 
almost  take  rank  with  folk-songs.*  Minor  balladists  else 
where  were  Thomas  Dunn  English  (1819-1902)  of  Philadel- 

*  The  authorship  of  the  genuine  negro  folk-songs  and  hymns,  like  Roll,  Jordan,  Roll,  and 
Swing  Low,  Sweet  Chariot,  is  of  course  untraceable.  Dixie  was  composed  in  1859  by  Daniel 
D.  Emmett,  who  was  born  in  Ohio  (1814)  of  Southern  parents. 


MINOR   POETRY   AND    MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE     249 

phia,  author  of  Ben  Bolt,  and  Coates  Kinney  (1826-1904)  of 
Cincinnati,  author  of  The  Rain  upon  the  Roof. 

Prose  writers  who  managed  to  struggle  clear  of  the  dis 
tractions  that  beset  a  commercial  and  cosmopolitan  commun 
ity,  are  not  easy  to  find  in  New  York  and  vicinity  after  the 
early  part  of  the  century.  Irving  and  Cooper  had  no  worthy 
successors.  Even  the  poets,  from  Bryant  and  Poe  down  to 
Willis  and  Taylor,  suffered  from  the  strenuous  journalism, 
political  and  other,  into  which  they  found  themselves 
plunged;  and  into  this  journalism  the  writers  of  prose  were 
one  and  all  lured,  so  that  the  history  of  the  prose  of  New  York 
is  mostly  the  history  of  her  Danas  and  Ripleys  and  Greeleys. 
These  were  able  and  even  scholarly  men,  but  their  work 
passed,  usually  with  the  day's  paper  for  which  it  was  done. 
A  little  more  enduring  is  the  work  of  those  who  had  the  larger 
leisure  of  the  weekly  or  monthly  magazine.  But  the  very 
best  of  the  New  York  magazines,  though  they  have  contrib 
uted  much  to  science,  art,  and  general  culture,  have  never 
represented  quite  the  same  high  literary  standard  as  the 
Atlantic  Monthly.  And  among  their  editors  and  contrib 
utors  there  was  no  Lowell  or  Holmes,  but  only  a  Holland,  a 
Curtis,  and  a  Warner.  Even  these  three,  it  must  be  noted, 
like  Dana,  Ripley,  Greeley,  and  Bryant  himself,  were  natives 
of  New  England  and  did  much  of  their  best  literary  work 
there. 

Josiah  Gilbert  Holland,  after  trying  both  teaching  and 
medicine,  set  out  upon  a  literary  career  at  Springfield,  Massa 
chusetts,  where  he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Spring- 
I8i9-i88i.an  'field  Republican.     He  won  his  early  fame  there 
through  his  "Timothy  Titcomb"  Letters  to  Young 
People  (collected  in  1858) — wholesome  social  essays  of  the 
sermonizing  type,  very  popular  in  their  day,  and  always 
worth  reading,  though  never  quite  demanding  to  be  read. 
He  followed  up  this  popularity  with  an  equally  popular  poem, 


250  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

Bitter-Sweet  (1858).  The  poem  contained  some  pleasant 
pictures  of  New  England  life — a  Thanksgiving  festival  and 
the  like — that  anticipated  the  finer  work  of  Whittier's  Snow- 
Bound,  but  it  won  its  vogue,  like  the  later  Kathrina  (1867), 
chiefly  by  its  sentimental  and  rather  melodramatic  story. 
Dr.  Holland  was  the  author,  too,  of  some  little  lyrics  of  a  wide 
currency — Babyhood,  for  instance,  and  Gradatim  ("Heaven 
is  not  reached  at  a  single  bound").  In  1870  at  New  York 
he  assisted  in  establishing  Scribner's  Monthly,  now  The  Cen 
tury,  and  he  was  the  efficient  editor  of  that  magazine  until 
his  death.  He  had  written  a  Life  of  Lincoln  in  1865;  and  in 
the  latter  portion  of  his  career  he  essayed  virtually  the  only 
form  of  literary  composition  he  had  left  untried  and  produced 
several  novels.  Arthur  Bonnicastle  (1873),  Sevenoaks  (1875), 
etc.,  are  good,  readable  stories  of  Yankee  life,  but  they  cannot 
be  ranked  with  the  similar  novels  of  Mrs.  Stowe  or  Dr. 
Holmes. 

If  Holland  in  some  ways  suggests  Whittier  and  Holmes, 
George  William   Curtis   suggests   quite   as   readily   Lowell. 

Curtis  was  not  a  poet,  but  he  was  a  foremost 
i82^i892rtls'  representative  of  that  class  of  industrious  literary 

journalists  who  combine  private  study  with 
public  service  and  who  have  done  so  much  to  mould  the  char 
acter  of  our  later  national  life.  He  was  a  native  of  Provi 
dence,  Rhode  Island,  and  was  a  student  at  Brook  Farm  at 
eighteen.  A  journey  through  Europe,  Egypt,  and  the  Holy 
Land,  resulted  in  several  highly  colored  volumes  of  travel — 
the  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji  (1851),  etc.  His  life  thereafter 
was  spent  in  journalism  at  New  York.  He  conducted  for  a 
long  time  the  "Easy  Chair"  of  Harper's  Magazine  and  was 
editor  of  Harper's  Weekly  at  the  time  of  his  death.  He  was 
interested  in  all  wise  reforms, — took  part  in  the  abolition 
movement,  and  later  attained  national  fame  for  his  resolute 
support  of  the  cause  of  civil  service  reform.  As  a  platform 


MINOR   POETRY   AND    MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE     251 

orator,  he  rose  almost  to  the  rank  of  Everett  and  Phillips,  and 
he  stands  to  us  today  more  for  his  character  as  a  man  and  an 
influential  public  citizen  than  as  a  writer.  Yet  his  name  is 
associated  with  some  well-remembered  books.  The  literary 
flavor  is  most  apparent  in  his  early  work — the  volumes  of 
travel  noted  above,  certain  essays  of  social  satire,  like  The 
Potiphar  Papers  (1853),  and  the  little  sketch  of  Prue  and  I 
(1856),  which,  with  its  delicate  sentiment  and  slender 
romance,  has  charmed  two  generations  of  readers.  His  later 
works  were  more  directly  the  result  of  his  contact  with  public 
life  and  public  men.  His  addresses  include,  besides  those  like 
Party  and  Patronage  on  civil  service  reform,  eulogies  on  Bry 
ant,  Phillips,  and  Lowell. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  remained  more  persistently  in 

New  England  than  Holland  or  Curtis,  but  his  name  was  so 

long  associated  with  the  editorial  department  of 

C.D.Warner,  rj  •>      n*       ,11       n^ 

1829-1900.  Harper  s  Monthly  Magazine  that  he  seems  to  be 
legitimately  of  the  New  York  group.  Born  at 
Plainfield,  Massachusetts,  he  went  to  Chicago  before  the  war, 
practicing  law  there  for  a  time,  and  then  settled  down  to  an 
editorial  career  at  Hartford,  Connecticut.  He  did  much 
"hack  work"  of  the  better  kind.  "The  American  Men  of 
Letters  Series,"  to  which  he  contributed  the  biography  of 
Irving,  was  prepared  under  his  supervision,  as  was  also  a 
" Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature."  He  wrote  several 
novels,  and  several  books  of  travel  not  unlike  Curtis's— My 
Winter  on  the  Nile  (1876),  etc.  But  his  most  characteristic 
work  is  to  be  sought  in  his  collections  of  essays,  such  as  My 
Summer  in  a  Garden  (1870)  and  Backlog  Studies  (1872). 
These  have  abundant  humor  and  that  indefinable  charm  of 
personality  by  which,  with  very  little  in  the  way  of  substance 
besides  a  mild  social  philosophy,  some  writers  succeed  in  win 
ning  the  affections  of  a  large  audience.  Clean,  gentle,  and 
whole-souled,  are  the  words  to  apply  to  Warner;  and  it  seems 


252  NATIONAL  LIFE    AND    CULTURE 

eminently  fitting  that  we  should  close  this  review  of  later  New 
York  prose  with  one  who  was,  in  his  modest  way,  not  unlike 
him  with  whom  our  study  of  the  earlier  prose  began — Wash 
ington  Irving. 

The  affiliations  of  Curtis  and  Warner,  as  of  Hale  and  Hig- 
ginson,  were  distinctly  enough  with  the  old  school  to  justify 
the  classification  of  them  that  is  here  made,  but  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  the  date  of  WTarner  brings  us  fairly  into  the  con 
temporary  period.  And  it  would  be  easy  in  this  place  to 
make  the  transition  to  that  group  of  writers,  led  by  Stedman, 
Aldrich,  and  Howells,  who  have  maintained  the  literary 
traditions  of  the  East  since  the  Civil  War.  But  one  con 
siderable  figure  remains;  and  it  is  through  Walt  Whitman 
after  all,  perhaps,  that  the  transition  to  our  later  literature 
in  its  broadest  and  most  characteristic  aspects  can  best  be 
made. 

WALT  WHITMAN,  1819-1892 

It  has  been  customary  to  regard  W7alt  Whitman,  the  start 
ling  innovator  and  scorner  of  traditions,  as  belonging  to  the 
younger  school  of  American  writers,  and  any  de- 
CharaSS-.  parture  from  that  custom  is  not  likely  to  pass  un 
challenged.  Without  troubling  ourselves  about 
his  relation  to  culture,  which,  whatever  Mr.  Burroughs*  may 
contend,  is  not  very  obvious,  we  may  yet  feel  that  he  is,  in 
manifold  ways,  sufficiently  representative  of  the  American 
national  spirit  to  give  him  a  place  in  this  chapter.  It  is  true, 
the  uniqueness  of  the  man  puts  him  apart  from  the  other  wri 
ters,  and  would  so  put  him  wherever  he  were  placed.  He 
seems  to  defy  classification.  The  public  has  not  yet  made  up 
its  mind  whether  he  was  a  poet  or  a  prose  writer,  a  philoso 
pher  or  an  ignoramus,  a  genius  or  a  charlatan.  But  his 
position  is  becoming  each  day  more  clearly  defined;  and  the 

*  Whitman:     A  Study.     By  John  Burroughs. 


WHITMAN  253 

undeniable  conspicuousness,  not  to  say  eminence,  of  that 
position,  together  with  the  nature  of  his  message,  which  after 
all  was  not  new  but  was  only  a  more  emphatic  declaration  of 
what  was  already  in  the  prose  of  Emerson  and  the  verse  of 
Whittier  and  Lowell,  gives  ample  warrant  for  putting  him 
with  the  men  of  that  elder  period.  Besides,  there  is  a  chro 
nological  warrant  in  the  date  of  his  birth,  which  is  the  same  as 
that  of  Lowell's;  and  though  he  was  much  later  than  Lowell 
in  coming  to  assured  fame,  his  work  was  well  begun  before 
the  war. 

The  details  of  Whitman's  life  are  of  peculiar  importance 
for  the  understanding  of  the  man  and  his  work.     He  was  born 

May  31,  1819,  at  West  Hills,  thirty  miles  from 
JfhLifeh0'  New  York  City,  on  "the  fish-shaped"  Long  Island 

which  he  loved  to  call  by  its  Indian  name  of 
"Paumanok."  His  ancestors  were  English  and  Dutch  yeo 
men,  with  a  slight  Quaker  strain;  three  centuries  of  them,  he 
tells  us,  concentrate  on  one  sterile  acre,  the  burial  hill  of  the 
Whitmans.  His  grandfather  had  farmed  his  lands  after  the 
manner  of  Southern  planters,  with  the  assistance  of  a  dozen 
slaves.  His  father  was  a  carpenter  and  builder.  His 
mother — "my  dearest  mother,"  "a  perfect  mother," — was 
Louise  Van  Velsor,  in  her  youth  a  healthy  Dutch-American 
lass  and  a  horseback  rider  only  less  daring  than  his  paternal 
grandmother  who  had  smoked  a  pipe  and  acted  as  overseer  of 
the  slaves.  His  formal  schooling,  which  was  elementary 
only,  was  obtained  rather  irregularly.  Many  days  of  his 
youth  he  spent  in  roaming  over  Long  Island,  lounging  with 
the  fishermen  on  the  beach,  talking  to  the  salt-hay  cutters  in 
the  meadows  or  the  herdsmen  in  the  hills,  clam-digging  in 
summer,  hauling  fat  eels  through  the  ice  in  winter.  Later, 
when  his  father  moved  to  Brooklyn,  he  often  stole  back  to 
declaim  Homer  or  Shakespeare  to  the  sea-gulls  and  the  surf. 
In  Brooklyn  he  became  a  typesetter  in  a  printing-office, 


254  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

reading  between  whiles  the  Arabian  Nights  and  the  Waverley 
Novels — later,  too,  Ossian,  yEschylus,  and  Dante.  He  was 
particularly  impressed  with  the  busy  tides  of  life  surging 
between  New  York  and  Brooklyn,  through  the  city  streets 
and  up  and  down  the  Sound.  He  had  a  passion  for  crowds, 
for  haunting  the  ferries,  the  omnibuses,  and  the  theatres. 
Thus  he  got  to  see  most  of  the  celebrated  men  and  women 
of  the  time — Jackson,  Webster,  Clay,  Lafayette,  Kossuth, 
Fanny  Kemble,  Halleck,  Cooper,  Bryant,  Poe.  For  com 
panions,  apparently,  he  sought  out  the  deck-hands  and  pilots 
on  the  boats,  or  the  omnibus  drivers,  "Broadway  Jack," 
"Balky  Bill,"  "Pop  Rice,"  and  the  rest,  by  whose  side  he 
would  ride,  listening  to  their  yarns,  or  declaiming  into  the 
street-traffic  some  passage,  it  might  be,  from  Julius  Caesar. 
In  due  time,  after  various  experiences  in  carpentering 
and  school-teaching,  he  became  an  editor.  Then,  in  his 
thirtieth  year,  he  set  off  with  his  brother  on  a  long 

Journalism  .  •in  i     i 

and  expedition  through  the  middle  states  and  down 

Literature.  ,,"....  ,     . 

the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers,  bringing  up  at 
New  Orleans,  where  he  remained  for  a  time  in  newspaper 
work.  Thence  he  worked  his  way  back,  up  the  Mississippi, 
by  the  Great  Lakes  and  Canada,  and  down  the  Hudson, 
travelling  in  all  eight  thousand  miles,  much  of  it  afoot.  Up 
to  this  time  his  journalistic  and  literary  work  was  of  the 
ordinary  type  and  had  attracted  no  attention.  He  had 
begun  to  write  at  twelve  years  of  age,  and  some  of  his  pieces 
had  appeared  in  Morris's  Mirror.  His  chief  editing  was  done 
for  the  Brooklyn  Eagle.  But  after  thirty  he  became  con 
scious  of  a  great  desire  growing  within  him,  and  to  accom 
plish  this  desire  he  resolved  to  put  aside,  if  need  be,  the  ordi 
nary  pursuits  of  life  and  forego  the  ordinary  rewards.  So 
well  as  he  could  formulate  it  to  himself,  it  was  a  desire  to  put 
on  record  in  some  literary  form  an  entire  personality,  a  man 
with  all  his  characteristics,  sensual  and  spiritual,  with  his 


WHITMAN  255 

bodily  sensations  and  appetites,  and  his  mental  and  moral 
struggles,  hopes,  and  dreams.  Moreover,  that  personality 
was  to  be  portrayed  in  the  midst  of  the  tumultuous,  free, 
expansive,  democratic  American  life  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Long  consideration  convinced  him  that 
the  only  way  in  which  he  could  do  this  successfully  would  be 
by  portraying  his  own  personality,  which  alone  he  knew,  and. 
which,  from  its  environment  and  experiences,  might  fairly 
be  regarded  as  the  personality  of  an  American  schooled  in 
the  world  both  of  nature  and  of  men,  robust,  energetic,  free, 
alert,  tolerant,  kind. 

In  accordance  with  this  design,  which  he  seemed  to  regard 
as  novel,  he  sought  some  new  form  of  expression.  He  dis 
carded  both  metre  and  rhyme,  and,  after  much  dif- 
ficulty,  all  stock  poetic  phrases,  preserving  still  a 
poetic  semblance  by  writing  in  long,  uneven  lines 
marked  with  a  rude  rhythm.  He  abandoned  the  name 
Walter  for  Walt,  and  "stood"  for  his  picture  with  his  hat  on 
one  side  of  his  head,  beard  rough,  blouse  open  at  the  throat, 
one  hand  on  his  hip  and  one  in  his  trousers  pocket.  Yet  the 
picture,  as  it  may  be  seen  in  his  volume,  is  not  defiant,  is  even 
winningly  modest  in  facial  expression,  betokening  a  char 
acter  of  frankness  and  simplicity;  and  Whitman  exemplified 
his  democratic  simplicity  by  setting  up  the  type  for  the  first 
edition  of  his  poems  (1855)  with  his  own  hands.  Leaves  of 
Grass  he  named  the  volume,  perhaps  in  symbol  of  the  lowly, 
teeming,  equality-loving  democracy  which  it  was  his  purpose 
to  sing. 

"One's-Self  I  sing,  a  simple  separate  person, 
Yet  utter  the  word  Democratic,  the  word  En-Masse. 

"Of  physiology  from  top  to  toe  I  sing, 
Not  physiognomy  alone  nor  brain  alone  is  worthy  for 
the  Muse,  I  say  the  Form  complete  is  worthier  far, 
The  Female  equally  with  the  Male  I  sing. 


256  NATIONAL   LIFE    AND    CULTURE 

"Of  Life  immense  in  passion,  pulse,  and  power, 
Cheerful,  for  freest  action  form'd  under  the  laws  divine, 
The  Modern  Man  I  sing." 

The  audacity  of  the  thing  challenged  attention,  but  it  was 
not  likely  to  win  impartial  criticism.  The  hedge-hog  public 
played  its  spines,  as  usual,  in  the  face  of  such  unconvention- 
ality,  and  the  author  became  notorious  if  not  yet  famous. 
The  book  was  condemned  by  general  readers,  and  by  many 
critics.  And  more  than  thirty  years  afterward,  Whitman, 
within  four  years  of  death,  could  still  complain  that  from  a 
worldly  point  of  view  his  book  had  been  worse  than  a  failure, 
that  he  had  not  gained  the  acceptance  of  his  time,  and  that 
public  criticism  still  showed  "marked  anger  and  contempt 
more  than  anything  else."  Abuse,  however,  is  a  better  stim 
ulus  than  neglect ;  there  must  have  been  something  to  create 
such  a  stir.  Besides,  Whitman  had,  from  the  first,  some 
loyal  defenders.  Emerson  did  not  reject  him,  nor  Carlyle. 
There  were  successive  editions  and  enlargements  of  his  work, 
and  in  1868  a  volume  of  selections  from  his  poems  was  edited 
by  W.  M.  Rossetti  in  England,  where  the  author  was  readily 
accepted  by  men  like  Swinburne,  Dowden,  and  Symonds. 

The  remainder  of  Whitman's  life  contains  an  important 

episode.     At  the  close  of  1862  he  learned  that  his  brother 

George,  an  officer  in  the  army,  had  been  wounded. 

WarExperi-  _T.       .     .  _         ' 

encesand       He  went  to  Virginia  and  became  an  army  nurse, 

Later  Life.  , 

and  from  then  till  after  the  close  ol  the  war 
served  faithfully  in  that  capacity  in  the  camps  and  hospitals 
about  Washington.  It  was  a  fit  heroic  accompaniment  to  his 
heroic  song,  and  it  is  almost  incredible  that  he  should  have 
been  dismissed  shortly  afterward  from  the  Interior  Depart 
ment  because  an  "official"  disapproved  of  his  Leaves  of  Grass. 
A  vindication  by  an  admirer,  published  under  the  title  of 
"The  Good  Gray  Poet,"  gave  him  an  enduring  sobriquet;  and 
he  was  soon  appointed  to  another  clerkship.  His  literary 


WALT  WHITMAN 
GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS 


BAYARD   TAYLOR 
SIDNEY   LANIER 


WHITMAN  257 

work  was  not  intermitted ;  the  war  experiences  furnished  him 
with  some  of  the  noblest  passages  of  his  poems  as  they  now 
stand — the  Drum-Taps  and  the  Memories  of  President 
Lincoln;  and  he  published  his  prose  Democratic  Vistas  in  1870. 
.After  a  stroke  of  paralysis  in  1873 — the  culmination  of  phy 
sical  ills  brought  on  by  his  hospital  service — he  retired  to 
Camden,  New  Jersey,  where  he  lived  thenceforth,  partly 
upon  the  generosity  of  his  friends.  His  home  became  the 
resort  of  many  visitors,  who  were  always  welcomed.  He 
lectured  occasionally,  and  he  took  a  jaunt  westward  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains  in  the  fall  of  1879,  but,  like  Thoreau  and 
Whittier,  never  went  abroad.  He  added  several  slender 
supplementary  volumes  of  both  prose  and  poetry — November 
Boughs,  1888,  and  Good  Bye,  My  Fancy,  1891.  He  designed 
and  built  his  own  tomb  at  Camden,  where  he  died,  March 
26,  1892. 

It  is  still  too  early  to  calculate  the  orbit  of  an  eccentric 
luminary  like  Whitman.  But  one  thing  wTe  are  certain  of, 
that  he  fills  a  large  place  in  the  hearts  of  many 
lovers  of  English  poetry,  and  that  he  cannot  be 
omitted  from  any  final  summary  of  American  literature.  To 
lose  from  our  records  such  a  virile,  stimulating  personality 
would  be  to  suffer  irremediable  loss.  Our  estimation  of  the 
value  of  his  work  must  grow  with  our  closer  acquaintance 
with  it.  It  has  been  said  that  his  prose  is  of  little  value,  but 
though  written,  unfortunately,  without  any  sense  of  style, 
it  is  of  much  value.  The  hospital  scenes  in  his  Specimen 
Days  are  among  the  strongest  documents  left  by  the  Civil 
War.  Whitman  continually  declared  that  the  real  war  would 
never  get  into  the  books;  but  one  aspect  of  it,  with  all  its 
horror  and  pathos  and  heroism,  has  fairly  gotten  into  his 
book.  It  is  an  aspect,  too,  that  most  needs  to  get  into  the 
books  in  the  interest  of  universal  peace.  His  Democratic 
Vistas  and  his  Backward  Glance  o'er  Travelled  Roads  are 


258  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

supplementary  to  his  poems  and  almost  indispensable  to  a 
right  understanding  of  them.  From  these  we  learn  that  his 
poems,  often  seemingly  incoherent  cries — a  "barbaric  yawp" 
he  called  them,  and  the  critics  found  it  a  good  catchword, — 
had  a  definite  purpose  and  were  constructed  on  a  carefully 
conceived  plan;  that,  as  stated  above,  they  aimed  to  set  forth 
the  democracy  of  this  new  world  and  nation,  with  all  its 
virtues  and  vices,  its  meanness  and  grandeur,  and  through 
it  all,  profiting  by  its  very  effacement  of  false  distinctions, 
the  sure  evolution  of  the  individual, — the  realization  of  the 
divine  personality,  call  it  soul  or  what  you  will,  that  every 
man  feels  within  him. 

Of  course  his  poems,  or  chants,  are  the  basis  of  his  reputa 
tion.  In  Leaves  of  Grass  he  left,  as  he  quaintly  expressed  it, 
The  Poet  n*s  carie~de-visite  to  posterity.  Nothing  is  easier 
and  its  than  to  pick  flaws  in  the  book.  In  the  eyes  of 

Defects.  .  t  J 

some  it  is  one  great  flaw,  a  standing  offense  to  the 
aesthetic  sense.  It  is  uncouth.  It  deliberately  violates  the 
rules  of  art,  and  unless  we  admit  that  our  rules  are  idle  we 
must  admit  its  defects.  We  are  struck  by  the  strange  vocab 
ulary,  the  hybrid  and  foreign  words  that  start  up  every 
where — imperiurbe,  aplomb,  habitan,  Americanos, — though 
now  and  then  a  humorous  intent  saves  the  phrase,  as  when 
we  read:  "No  dainty  dolce  affettuoso  I."  Even  more  strik 
ing  is  the  peculiar,  lawless  rhythmic  movement,  not  the 
easy  rhythm  of  prose  nor  the  regular  metre  of  verse,  but 
something  between  the  two.  It  is  true,  we  have  been  accus 
tomed  to  the  same  thing  in  the  lyric  passages  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  in  Ossian.  But  the  preference  of  the  ear 
for  the  regular  harmonies  of  verse  is  shown  by  the  fondness 
with  which  readers  cling  to  one  of  the  two  or  three  metrical 
and  rhymed  poems  in  the  book, — 0  Captain!  My  Captain! 
Indeed,  it  is  not  likely  that  symmetry  of  form,  which  has 
marked  great  poems  from  before  the  days  of  the  Iliad,  will 


WHITMAN  259 

ever  be  generally  abandoned.  Whitman  chose  to  abandon 
it  because  he  fancied  that  a  greater  freedom  of  form  accorded 
with  his  theme.  That  Whitman  would  not  have  succeeded 
better  with  conventional  forms  is  extremely  probable,  but  the 
conviction  remains  that  the  final  poem  even  of  Democracy, 
if  such  ever  comes,  will  be  a  product  of  higher  art  than  his. 
A  more  serious  defect  of  Leaves  of  Grass  inheres  in  its 
substance  and  method.  It  is  diffuse,  prolix.  This,  too, 
Whitman  would  say,  is  in  accordance  with  the  subject. 
Democracy  is  all-inclusive.  American  life  is  a  great  welter 
and  chaos,  and  all  this  must  go  into  the  poem.  But  even 
chaos  might  be  suggested  without  enumerating  its  particu 
lars.  The  cunning  painter  knows  how  to  put  vast  crowds 
into  his  canvas  without  painting  all  the  individuals.  Whit 
man  insists  on  the  particulars  and  makes  no  attempt  at  con 
centration.  He  complained  of  Emerson's  books  being  all 
good  sugar  and  butter.  For  himself,  he  gives  us  plenty  of 
coarse  bread  and  even  unmilled  grain  in  the  straw. 

"Land  of  coal  and  iron!  land  of  gold!  land  of  cotton,  sugar,  rice! 
Land  of  wheat,  beef,  pork!  land  of  wool  and  hemp!  land  of  the  apple 
and  the  grape!" 

"I  hear  bravuras  of  birds,  bustle  of  growing  wheat,  gossip  of  flames, 

clack  of  sticks  cooking  my  meals, 

The  ring  of  alarm-bells,  the  cry  of  fire,  the  whirr  of  swift-streaking 
engines  and  hose-carts  with  premonitory  tinkles  and  color 'd 
lights." 

There  are  many  pages  of  this, — poetic  and  prose  phrases 
jostling  each  other  in  hopeless  confusion.  Doubtless  the 
impression  made  is  that  of  ceaseless  movement  and  end 
less  diversity,  of  tumultuousness  and  multitudinousness. 
But  it  is  made  at  a  great  cost  of  time  and  nerves  to  the  reader 
and  with  little  cost  to  the  writer.  Much  of  what  we  are 
obliged  to  read  is  but  the  raw  material  of  poetry  which  the 


260  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

writer  has  flung  down  before  us  without  taking  the  pains  to 
exercise  his  art  upon  it. 

Finally,  the  gravest  charge  against  Leaves  of  Grass  touches 
its  frequent  coarseness  of  theme  and  expression.  Whitman 
would  conceal  nothing,  and  naturally,  in  his  conscious  revolt 
against  a  society  that  timidly  conceals  too  much,  he  grew  a 
little  defiant  in  his  plain-spokenness.  This  is  perhaps  the 
most  that  can  be  charged — he  was  needlessly  gross.  There 
was  nothing  morbid  or  vicious  about  it.  His  conception  of 
society  and  the  plan  of  his  poem  were  in  part  his  defence;  be 
sides,  he  was  so  constituted  that  he  could  accept  all  levels 
and  conditions  of  life  on  equal  terms  and  feel  no  repulsion; 
nor  could  he  understand  why  others  should  feel  any.  He 
could  associate  with  the  tramp,  with  the  Indian,  with  the 
butcher  boy  in  the  shambles.  He  was  "no  sentimentalist, 
no  stander  above  men  and  women."  "I  think  I  could  turn 
and  live  with  animals,  they  are  so  placid  and  self-contain'd." 
He  is  the  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Abraham  Lincoln  type  still 
further  materialized;  and  inasmuch  as  we  have  admired  the 
type  and  even  proclaimed  it  to  the  world  as  American,  we 
should  do  ill  to  repudiate  Whitman.  At  the  same  time  we 
may  well  remind  ourselves  that  we  have  another  type,  one  of 
refinement  and  spirituality,  to  set  over  against  it — our 
Longfellows,  Whittiers,  Hawthornes,  and  Emersons. 

When  we  turn  to  praise  of  Whitman,  our  task  seems 
equally  easy.  The  charge  of  egotism  (except  in  the  tech 
nical,  philosophical  sense  of  the  word)  may  be 
ms  Aims.  dismissed.  We  have  seen  how  he  came  to  put 
himself  so  conspicuously  into  his  poems.  It  was 
not  to  parade  himself  as  an  exceptional  being  but  rather  as  an 
"average  man" — to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  other  men  and 
declare  his  kinship  with  them.  There  is  no  self-conceit  about 
that.  Moreover,  looking  back  upon  his  work  in  his  old  age, 
Whitman  was  disposed  to  regard  it  very  modestly  and  to 


WHITMAN  261 

admit  frankly  some  of  its  shortcomings.  He  admitted  that 
in  pictorial  and  dramatic  talent  and  in  verbal  melody  not 
only  the  great  masters  of  poetry  but  many  besides  had  trans 
cended  all  that  he  had  done  or  could  do.  In  his  youth  he 
had  accepted  the  challenge  of  science  and  democracy  to 
idealize  them;  in  his  age  he  saw  the  magnitude  of  the  attempt 
and  wondered  at  his  audacity.  The  whole  thing  was  experi 
mental,  and  the  probabilities  were  that  it  was  largely  a 
failure.  He  had  honestly  tried  to  give  this  new  America  a 
new  poem,  worthy  of  its  new  ideals;  granted  that  he  had 
failed,  it  was  something  that  he  had  gained  a  hearing  and 
perhaps  pointed  the  way  for  a  future  and  more  able  bard. 
The  projected  song  of  the  soul,  to  supplement  his  song  of  the 
body,  he  had  not  sung,  or  had  sung  only  in  hints  and  frag 
ments.  That  greater  task  he  was  willing  to  leave  for  the 
future  bard.  Even  what  he  had  done  was  rough  and  in 
choate.  "I  round  and  finish  little,  if  anything."  "The 
word  I  myself  put  primarily  is  the  word  Suggestiveness.  .  .  . 
Another  impetus-word  is  Comradeship.  .  .  Other  word- 
signs  would  be  Good  Cheer,  Content,  and  Hope." 

Because  Whitman  as  an  artist  did  not  always  distinguish 
between  good  and  bad,  pursuing  a  theory  with  the  usual  fatal 
results,  is  not  sufficient  reason  for  rejecting  him. 
^ye  ^  not  reject  Wordsworth.  We  can  pass  by 
the  bad  and  dwell  upon  the  good.  Taking  Whit 
man  simply  at  his  own  final  valuation,  we  get  much.  The  joys 
of  free  fellowship,  the  love  of  comrades,  none  has  sung  more 
heartily,  none  perhaps  better.  And  his  courage  and  opti 
mism  are  as  deep  as  Emerson's.  To  the  very  last,  beneath 
life's  setting  sun,  he  warbled  (it  is  his  own  word) "  unmitigated 
adoration."  No  one  rises  from  his  pages  despondent. 
They  breathe  of  life  and  health  and  boundless  spaces  out  of 
doors.  They  quicken  the  pulse  and  enlarge  the  vision.  He 
may  have  lacked  the  art  of  suggestion,  the  art  which  draws 


262  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

a  portrait  at  a  stroke,  but  there  is  no  denying  his  claim  to  a 
profound  suggestiveness.  He  throws  out  hints  and  clews 
which  the  reader  must  follow  for  himself.  His  poems  open 
upon  vistas.  Read  When  I  Heard  the  Learn  'd  Astronomer, 
or  As  I  Ebb'd  with  the  Ocean  of  Life,  or  Tears,  or  With  Husky- 
Haughty  Lips,  0  Sea.  Perhaps  still  better  examples  are  to  be 
found  in  his  Passage  to  India  or  his  Whispers  of  Heavenly  Death, 
those  later  and  lofty  chants  in  which  he  was  feeling  his  way 
toward  the  nobler,  unwritten  poem  of  man's  immortal  part. 
There  may  be  doubt  whether  Whitman  has  given  us  any 
adequate  song  of  democracy.  He  stands  for  the  American 
spirit,  but  not  as  does  Franklin,  Lincoln,  or  Lowell.  If  we 
think  of  all  that  these  men  did  and  then  of  what  Whitman 
did,  the  difference  is  manifest.  His  office  was  somewhat  like 
that  of  one  who  stands  by  and  cheers  while  the  procession 
goes  on.  It  is  true,  he  took  a  noble  part  through  the  Civil 
War — none  nobler.  But  it  was  a  humble  part;  he  did  not 
sit  in  the  seats  of  the  mighty.  He  saw  democracy  from  below 
only,  whereas  Franklin  and  the  others  saw  it  from  both  below 
and  above.  Yet  one  positive  accomplishment  must  be  set  to 
his  credit.  He  became  the  truest  laureate  of  the  War,  and  of 
Lincoln,  the  idol  of  the  people.  His  Drum-Taps  give  us  the 
poetry  of  the  great  conflict,  as  his  camp  and  hospital  sketches 
give  us  the  prose.  Beat!  Beat!  Drums!  and  Song  of  the 
Banner  at  Daybreak  are  true  poems  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 
The  Memories  of  President  Lincoln  are  as  exalted  as  an  elegy 
with  such  a  great  theme  should  be,  yet  as  tender  as  the 
sincerest  threnody  born  of  personal  grief.  When  Lilacs  Last 
in  the  Dooryard  Bloom' d  and  0  Captain!  My  Captain!  must 
endure  with  the  fame  of  the  "martyr-chief." 

"O  Captain!  my  Captain!  our  fearful  trip  is  done, 
The  ship  has  weather' d  every  rack,  the  prize  we  sought  is  won, 
The  port  is  near,  the  bells  I  hear,  the  people  all  exulting, 
While  follow  eyes  the  steady  keel,  the  vessel  grim  and  daring; 


WHITMAN  263 

But  O  heart!  heart!  heart! 

O  the  bleeding  drops  of  red, 
Where  on  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 

Fallen  cold  and  dead." 

Whitman's  own  opinion  of  the  verbal  melody  of  his  poems 
(the  regularity  of  the  one  just  quoted  is  altogether  excep 
tional)  has  already  been  cited.  It  must  not  be  lightly 
assumed,  however,  that  there  is  no  music  in  his  verse.  We 
are  inclined  to  complain  when  a  poem  like  The  Vision  of 
Sir  Launfal  yields  less  melody  than  its  form  promises ;  on  the 
other  hand,  we  are  delighted  to  find  many  of  Whitman's 
poems  yielding  more  melody  than  they  promise.  When  his 
theme  rises  and  his  imagination  and  feeling  rise  with  it,  the 
words  flow  musically  enough  and  the  rhythm  answers  to  the 
emotion.  Listen  to  the  bird  song  in  Out  of  the  Cradle  End 
lessly  Rocking  — 

"  Winds  blow  south,  or  winds  blow  north, 
Day  come  white,  or  night  come  black, 
Home,  or  rivers  and  mountains  from  home, 
Singing  all  time,  minding  no  time, 
While  we  two  keep  together." 

Not  to  feel  the  simple  melody  "of  this,  or  the  larger  harmony — 
the  soothing,  wave-like  lapse — of  other  passages  in  the  same 
poem,  the  ample  sweep  of  the  Song  of  the  Redwood  Tree,  the 
majestic  march  of  Pioneers!  0  Pioneer s,,the  passionate  pulse 
of  Beat!  Beat!  Drums! — Blow!  Bugles!  Blow!  would  argue  one 
dull  of  sense  indeed. 

But  music  and  form  are  the  last  things  Whitman  would 
desire  to  have  himself  gauged  by.  He  stands  at  the  farthest 
remove  from  artist-poets  like  Poe,  Longfellow,  and  Tennyson. 
He  is  more  akin  to  Carlyle  and  Emerson — men  of  poetic 
insight  careless  about  some  of  the  minor  poetic  gifts.  He  did 
not  write  to  please,  but  to  arouse  and  uplift.  "The  true 
question  to  ask  respecting  a  book,  is,  has  it  helped  any  human 


264  NATIONAL   LIFE   AND    CULTURE 

soul?"  He  explicitly  declared  that  no  one  would  get  at  his 
verses  by  viewing  them  as  a  literary  performance  or  as  aim 
ing  mainly  toward  art  or  sestheticism. 

"Camerado,  this  is  no  book, 
Who  touches  this  touches  a  man." 

As  such,  therefore,  the  book  must  go  down  to  posterity,  not  a 
perfect  song,  rounded,  complete,  and  detached,  but  a  cry, 
sometimes  clear  and  strong,  sometimes  husky  and  broken, 
but  always  vibrant  with  the  feeling  of  the  man  who  uttered  it. 
Here  it  seems  well  to  mark  the  conclusion  of  the  first 
national  period — the  creative  period — of  our  literature, 
though  of  course  literature,  like  history  itself,  is  continuous, 
and  can  have  no  real  conclusion  short  of  national  extinction. 
From  Brown  and  Irving  to  Lowell  and  Whitman  the  compass 
has  travelled  a  pretty  wide  arc.  At  first  timid  in  spirit,  and 
bound  more  or  less  consciously  to  conventional,  old-world 
forms,  our  literature  gradually  shook  itself  free  and  stood 
forth  a  native  product,  willing  to  be  gauged  by  its  inherent 
vitality  and  its  unborrowed  charms.  It  began  to  register 
faithfully,  too,  the  various  steps  in  our  national  progress — 
the  merely  material  subjugation  of  the  wilderness,  the 
declaration  of  moral  and  intellectual  independence  that  fol 
lowed  upon  the  declaration  of  political  independence,  the 
development  of  a  worthy  cis-Atlantic  scholarship,  the 
encouragement  of  science  and  the  scientific  spirit,  and  the 
final  establishment  of  the  great  modern  principle  of  human 
equality.  The  progress  was  one  that  looked  always  toward 
making  "the  bounds  of  freedom  wider  yet."  And  with  Lin 
coln's  emancipation  proclamation  on  the  political  side,  and, 
on  the  literary  side,  the  vindication  by  Emerson,  Whitman, 
and  others  of  the  inviolate  rights  of  the  individual,  America's 
part  in  the  foremost  mission  of  the  nineteenth  century  seems 
to  have  been  accomplished  and  the  way  cleared  for  new  effort. 


PART  III 

LATER  ACTIVITY 

FROM  THE  ATLANTIC  TO  THE  PACIFIC 
1860-1900 


265 


LATER  ACTIVITY 

Continuous  though  our  literature  was  and  is,  a  very  per 
ceptible  change  came  over  the  character  of  it  in  the  seventh 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  Civil  War  troubled 
and  retarded  the  current.  The  elder  writers  continued  in 
their  calling,  but,  except  in  the  cases  of  two  or  three — Lowell, 
rather  younger  than  the  rest,  and  Holmes,  to  whom  was  given 
a  second  youth, — there  was  naturally  a  falling  off  in  the 
quality  of  their  product,  or  they  turned  their  attention  to 
translation  and  other  less  original  work.  And  the  younger 
generation  was  slow  to  take  their  places. 

Of  two  reasons  that  may  be  assigned  for  this  phenomenon, 
one  has  just  been  mentioned.  The  civil  conflict,  so  long 
averted,  but  coming  finally  with  such  terrible  and  prolonged 
results,  absorbed  the  best  energies  and  blood  of  the  youth  of 
the  nation.  Even  the  masses  of  the  people  who  took  no 
direct  part  in  it  were  necessarily  distracted  by  it,  and  the 
conditions  of  life  were  made  harder.  There  was  no  leisure 
for  art,  and  no  demand  for  it — no  surplus  of  wealth  to  support 
it.  The  latest  birth-year  of  our  great  writers  was  that  of 
Lowell  and  Whitman,  1819,  or,  if  we  include  Parkman, 
Curtis,  and  Taylor,  that  of  Taylor,  1825.  Manifestly,  those 
born  later  had  not  time  to  get  fully  settled  in  the  literary  way 
of  life  before  the  great  struggle  came;  and  the  prohibitive 
conditions  which  it  brought  remained  operative  for  many 
years. 

The  other  reason  is  scarcely  a  reason, — it  is  rather  an  ob 
served  fact.  Literature,  like  other  phenomena,  seems  to  fol 
low  some  law  of  rhythm.  Great  writers  appear  in  groups  and 
a  period  of  great  achievement  is  followed  by  a  period  of  lesser 
achievement  or  even  barrenness.  It  was  perhaps  inevitable 

267 


268  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

that  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  should  show  no  such 
literary  record  as  the  middle.  The  drift  of  the  age,  too,  away 
from  idealistic  philosophy,  toward  a  materialistic  science  and 
industrialism  and  commercialism,  tended  to  check  artistic 
creation  and  assist  this  rhythmic  ebb.  Possibly  we  are 
wrong  in  fancying  that  there  is  any  antagonism  between 
science  and  poetry,  and  possibly  we  fail  to  estimate  rightly 
the  artistic  product  of  our  times;  but  the  fact  remains  that, 
in  our  present  judgment,  not  more  than  one  poet  arose  in  the 
closing  decades  of  the  century  who  could  compare  with  the 
seven  who  filled  the  preceding  decades  with  song;  nor  was 
there  any  writer  of  imaginative  prose  to  compare  with  Poe 
and  Hawthorne,  nor  any  orator  like  Webster,  nor  any  sage 
like  Emerson. 

But  the  period  has  been  far  from  barren.  Criticism  is  ran 
sacking  all  the  records  of  the  past ;  science  is  making  new  rec 
ords;  and  journalism  grows  apace.  Pens  were  never  busier 
than  now,  and  ephemeral  as  their  product  for  the  most  part 
seems,  the  future  will  doubtless  find  in  it  something  worthy  to 
be  preserved.  Meanwhile  we  observe  that  new  notes  have 
been  sounded,  both  in  verse  and  in  prose,  and  though  our 
judgment  must  be  still  cautious  and  apologetic,  we  feel 
assured  that  our  literature  is  daily  growing,  if  not  deeper,  yet 
broader  and  richer.  We  observe  too,  the  wide  geographical 
distribution  of  this  later  product.  New  England  and  the 
Middle  Atlantic  States  no  longer  hold  a  monopoly.  The 
South  was  gathering  strength  in  letters  even  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  war;  and  since  then,  literature,  after  taking  one  great 
leap  with  the  leap  of  settlement  to  the  Pacific  coast,  has 
gradually  spread  over  the  country  until  now  there  is  scarcely 
a  considerable  valley,  plain,  or  mountain-side,  south,  west, 
north,  or  east,  that  has  not  its  local  writers  and  even  its  local 
tone.  Indeed,  among  the  new  notes  of  our  literature,  this 
vogue  of  the  provincial,  this  strong  and  endlessly  varied  local 


LATER   ACTIVITY  269 

color,  is  so  marked  that  it  might  almost  give  its  name  to  the 
period. 

In  grouping  the  writers  of  this  period,  therefore,  a  geo 
graphical  division  is  desirable.  Except,  too,  for  the  motley 
later  fiction,  often  too  narrowly  local  to  be  thus  classified,  such 
a  division  will  be  found  both  easy  and  logical,  since  the  writ 
ers  of  each  large  section  of  the  country,  with  all  their  minor 
differences,  betray  common  characteristics  and  tendencies. 
No  classification,  however,  can  be  perfect;  and  especially 
in  such  a  diverse  and  restless  population  as  ours,  one  must  be 
prepared  to  find  writers  who  constantly  overstep  the  bounds 
of  their  section  and  class.  Walt  Whitman,  for  instance, 
who  might  well  have  been  the  spokesman  of  a  less  aristo 
cratic  community,  was  of  the  East ;  and  naturally  a  few  types 
of  all  sections  may  be  seen  meeting  on  the  common  new 
ground  of  the  West.  But  on  the  whole  these  sections,  as 
reflected  in  literature,  have  kept  remarkably  distinct. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
POETRY  IN   THE   SOUTH 

Before  1860,  no  literary  impulse  manifesting  itself  in  work 
of  high  order  was  felt  farther  south  than  Richmond.  The 
name  of  Poe,  which  Richmond  may  claim,  is  of  course  nation 
al,  and  more.  But  the  names  of  Wilde  of  Georgia  and  Simms 
of  South  Carolina  are  considerably  less.  Such  other  names 
as  might  be  mentioned  are,  properly,  almost  wholly  forgotten. 
About  1860,  however,  there  were  signs  of  an  awakened 
activity,  and  though  it  was  checked  and  thwarted  by  the 
disasters  that  speedily  followed,  it  was  never  entirely 
repressed,  and  it  finally  resulted  in  a  literature  that  no  longer 
compared  unfavorably  with  the  contemporaneous  literature 
of  the  North. 

So  far  as  the  South  is  concerned,  the  period  from  1860  to 
1900  falls  sharply  into  two  parts.  The  first  half  was  marked 
by  poetic  activity,  but  apparently  brought  forth  not  a  single 
important  work  of  prose.  During  the  second  half  the  activity 
in  prose  fiction  was  marked,  while  the  period  was  singularly 
barren  of  poetry.  All  of  the  literature  was  in  some  sense 
retrospective.  At  least  it  kept  rather  closely  to  the  tra 
ditions  of  an  earlier  time.  The  poetry  was  but  a  second 
flowering  of  that  exuberant  lyricism  which  distinguished  the 
earlier  writers  from  Wilde  to  Poe,  while  the  prose  fiction, 
often  poetic  in  coloring,  but  half  adopted  the  methods  of  the 
later  realists,  reverting  by  choice  to  the  old  South,  and  keep 
ing  mostly  on  the  side  of  chivalry  and  romance. 

Paul  Hamilton  Hayne  and  Henry  Timrod,  the  first  in 
time  of  the  later  poets,  are  properly  remembered  together. 
They  were  born  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  with  but 
three  weeks  difference  in  their  ages.  They  sat  together  at 

270 


HAYNE   AND    TIMROD  271 

school,  and  remained  lifelong  friends.  Both  had  the  friendly 
encouragement  of  the  novelist  Simms.  Both  served  in  the 
Paul  H.  Confederate  army,  Hayne  as  a  colonel,  Timrod 
i83o°i886.  as  a  private  and  a  war  correspondent.  Both 
ThSSd,  suffered  wreck  of  health  and  home  in  the  devas- 
1829-1867.  tating  conflict,  and  both  wrung  from  its  turmoil 
inspiration  to  song.  Hayne,  who  was  a  member  of  an  old 
and  wealthy  Carolina  family — a  nephew  of  the  Senator 
Hayne  made  famous  by  the  great  debate  with  Webster — was 
the  more  fortunate  of  the  two  in  worldly  circumstances  and 
length  of  life.  The  war,  however,  left  him  in  poverty,  and 
he  retired  in  his  later  years  to  the  pine  barrens  near  Augusta, 
Georgia,  pursuing  his  chosen  profession  of  writing  as  a  means 
of  support.  He  had  published  a  volume  of  poems  as  early 
as  1855,  and  he  was  long  regarded  as  the  representative  poet 
of  the  South,  though  both  Timrod  and  Lanier  have  since 
come  to  share  his  honors.  With  much  of  the  artist  in  his 
temperament,  he  excelled  in  sonnets,  and  in  quiet  land 
scape  poems  picturing  the  warmth  and  softness  of  southern 
scenery.  He  wrote  war  lyrics  and  ballads — Beyond  the  Po 
tomac,  Vicksburg,  In  Harbor,  etc. — but  they  breathe  little 
more  of  the  Tyrtsean  spirit  than  do  Longfellow's.  They  are 
distinctly  inferior  to  the  stirring  war  ballads  of  several  other 
wise  minor  poets — Forceythe  Willson,  for  example,  by  resi 
dence  of  Kentucky,  or  Dr.  Francis  O.  Ticknor  of  Georgia, 
whose  poems  Hayne  edited,  and  who  was  the  author  of  the 
striking  Little  Giffen  of  Tennessee. 

Timrod,  perhaps,  of  all  these  writers,  felt  most  keenly  the 
blow  that  so  injured  the  rising  literature  of  the  South.  He 
published  a  volume  of  poems  in  1860,  which  was  well  received; 
but  the  war,  beginning  shortly  afterward,  interfered  with  any 
continuous  effort  and  left  him  in  the  end  to  carry  on  a  losing 
fight  against  poverty  and  consumption.  The  death  of  a  child 
added  to  the  bitterness  of  his  last  desolate  years.  He  died 


272  POETRY   IN   THE   SOUTH 

in  1867.  His  poems,  numbering  about  eighty  in  all,  were 
gathered  and  published  in  1873,  with  a  memoir  by  his  friend 
Hayne,  and  there  was  a  re-issue — a  memorial  edition — in 
1899.  Timrod  was  a  more  serious  and  spontaneous  singer 
than  Hayne,  and  somewhat  less  finished,  though  still  of  a  fine 
artistic  sense.  Katie  is  an  exquisite  little  idyl,  with  pictures 
like  paintings  on  porcelain.  Better  known  and  more  dis 
tinctly  southern  is  The  Cotton  Boll,  a  poem  veritably  aglow 
with  the  dazzling  sunshine  that  lies  over  the  snowy  cotton 
fields,  and  sounding,  in  its  deeper  passages,  a  note  of  prayer 
ful  patriotism  half  Miltonic  in  fervor.  His  poems  written 
in  war  time,  few,  but  strong,  passionate,  and  sincere,  mark 
him  as  the  real  laureate  of  the  Confederacy.  Carolina  and 
Ethnogenesis  ('the  birth  of  a  nation')  are  the  utterances  of  a 
noble  and  fiery  heart.  Yet  the  word  "peace"  was  always 
on  his  lips,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  poem  that  does  not  end 
with  a  peaceful  vision  or  prayer, — which  makes  the  tragedy 
of  his  life  one  of  the  inscrutable  ironies  of  fate. 

Sidney  Lanier,  who  began  his  work  just  about  the  time  of 
Timrod's  premature  death,  is  the  foremost  singer  that  the 

South  has  given  us  since  Poe;  some  critics,  indeed, 
Lanier,  notably  Mr.  Stedman,  have  been  disposed  to  put 

him  almost  on  a  level  with  our  great  poets.  His 
life,  also,  was  broken  and  brief.  Born  at  Macon,  Georgia, 
of  Huguenot  and  Scotch  ancestry,  he  was  graduated  from  a 
Georgia  college  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  and  in  the  year  follow 
ing,  on  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  enlisted  in  the  Confederate 
army.  He  was  in  the  battle  of  Seven  Pines  and  in  the  Seven 
Days'  Battle  about  Richmond,  and  spent  five  months  in 
captivity  in  Point  Lookout  prison.  Some  of  his  war  exper 
iences  went  into  his  first  book,  Tiger  Lilies,  a  hastily  written 
novel  published  in  1867.  After  the  war,  with  little  but  a 
brave  wife  and  a  brave  heart,  he  began  his  fifteen  years'  strug 
gle  with  consumption.  When  his  health  permitted,  he  taught 


LANIER  273 

or  played  the  flute  in  an  orchestra  at  Baltimore.  So  passion 
ately  fond  of  music  was  he  that  he  could  scarcely  decide 
between  that  and  poetry  in  his  choice  of  a  profession,  though 
the  needs  of  his  life  were  such  as  to  leave  little  to  the  prefer 
ences  of  his  taste.  He  did  some  irregular  literary  work  of 
whatever  nature  came  to  hand.  Through  the  influence  of 
Bayard  Taylor,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  made  and  who 
was  one  of  the  first  to  appreciate  his  powers,  he  was  brought 
into  public  notice  by  being  chosen  to  write  the  Cantata  for 
the  opening  of  the  Centennial  Exposition  in  1876.  In  1879 
he  was  appointed  a  lecturer  on  English  literature  at  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  Baltimore,  and  his  prospects  for  leisure 
and  a  competence  were  at  last  brightening.  Two  years  later 
he  died. 

Lanier's  prose  includes,  besides  the  youthful  novel  already 
mentioned,  some  working  over  of  old  chronicles  and  legends 
for  juvenile  readers — The  Boy's  Froissart,  The  Boy's  King  Ar 
thur,  etc., — and  two  series  of  university  lectures,  The  Sci 
ence  of  English  Verse,  and  The  English  Novel.  The  latter  are 
valuable  as  stimulative  pieces  of  criticism,  but  Lanier's  prose 
would  not  alone  make  good  his  literary  claims.  These  rest 
upon  his  poetry,  of  which  a  volume  was  published  in  1876, 
and  a  complete  volume  posthumously.  The  bulk  of  it  is  not 
much  greater  than  Timrod's,  but  it  is  in  every  wTay  larger  in 
conception  and  more  finished  in  form.  Lanier  had  definite 
and  positive  views  of  the  relation  of  art  to  life — it  might  al 
most  be  said  that  to  him  art  was  life.  He  invested  it  with  the 
sacredness  of  religion,  and  everywhere  through  his  verse  may 
be  seen  an  exaltation  of  the  creative  gift  and  a  protest  against 
the  commercialism  and  materialism,  the  greed  and  insincerity 
that  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  curses  of  our  modern  civilization 
and  to  put  poetry,  music,  and  all  the  means  of  aesthetic  and 
spiritual  enjoyment  beyond  our  reach.  These  views,  how 
ever,  are  not  didactically  set  forth.  On  the  contrary,  there 


274  POETRY  IN   THE   SOUTH 

is  little  American  verse  more  refined  and  airily  imaginative 
than  Lanier's,  and  none,  except  Poe's,  more  melodious. 
His  poems  are  gospels  even  more  in  their  form  than  in  their 
substance.  The  Symphony  is  not  only  a  glorification  of  art; 
it  is  itself  a  glorified  example  of  art,  in  which  the  violins  and 
the  flute  and  the  clarionet  are  made  to  speak  almost  in  their 
own  tones,  complaining  of  the  deadly  blight  of  Trade,  and 
singing  the  praises  of  the  music-master,  unselfish  Love.  Corn 
is  the  hymn  of  the  higher  life  of  culture.  The  Ballad  of  the 
Trees  and  the  Master  and  The  Marshes  of  Glynn  are  religion 
set  to  music. 

Lanier  was  a  constant  experimenter,  and  though  he  was 
permitted  to  accomplish  little,  he  essayed  much.  The  Revenge 
ofHamish,  in  which  he  went  outside  of  America  for  a  subject, 
as  Timrod  did  in  Katie,  is  a  narrative  poem  in  long  swinging 
lines — a  powerful,  almost  tear-compelling  ballad.  The  Psalm 
of  the  West  is  an  ambitious  song  of  the  New  World  and  the 
American  Republic,  from  the  voyage  of  Columbus  to  the  re 
union  of  North  and  South.  There  are  several  good  poems  in 
the  negro  dialect;  and  there  are  some  exquisite  lyrics,  of 
which  perhaps  the  best  are  The  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee  and 
Evening  Song.  But  the  incomplete  Hymns  of  the  Marshes, 
upon  which  he  worked  feverishly  almost  to  the  hour  of  his 
death,  indubitably  reveal  the  poet  at  his  highest  and  best. 
The  pictures  of  the  live  oaks  with  their  " little  green  leaves," 
of  the  glimmering  marsh,  "a  limpid  labyrinth  of  dreams,"  of 
the  rising  sun  and  the  flooding  sea,  are  all  drawn  by  the  hand 
of  a  master.  It  must  be  admitted,  too,  that  even  after  Poe 
and  Tennyson  and  Swinburne  he  has  wrested  new  melodies 
from  words.  Yet  we  are  often  made  to  feel  that  in  applying 
so  cunningly  his  theories  of  "tone-color"  and  harmony  he  has 
been  led  too  far  from  spontaneity  and  has  substituted  arti 
ficial  conceits  for  the  fresh  imagery  of  inspiration.  In  his 
devotion  to  the  two  arts  of  music  and  verse,  he  has  lost  sight 


LANIER  275 

of  the  boundaries  of  each,  and  has  tried  to  secure,  with 
language,  effects  which  should  be  attempted  with  music 
only.  In  spite,  however,  of  partial  and  perhaps  inevitable 
failure,  we  shall  long  remember  him  for  his  high  ideals,  for  the 
religious  and  even  heroic  consecration  of  his  life  to  art  under 
most  discouraging  conditions,  and  for  the  undeniable  beauty 
of  much  that  he  left  behind. 


CHAPTER  IX 
PROSE  AND  POETRY  IN  THE  WEST 

Literature  in  the  West — between  the  Ohio  River,  let  us  say, 
and  the  Pacific  Ocean — has  not  followed  the  same  course  of 
development  as  in  the  South.  It  scarcely  made  a  beginning 
until  well  after  the  Civil  War;  perhaps  no  book  published  in 
this  region  before  1867  is  worth  recording  today.  Moreover, 
it  is  different  in  character.  Prose  and  poetry  have  from  the 
outset  existed  side  by  side,  with  a  perceptible  leaning  toward 
prose  as  the  more  natural  form  of  expression.  The  prose 
which  we  shall  find  supplanting  the  poetry  of  the  South  is 
still  in  a  measure  poetic;  the  poetry  of  the  West  often  tends 
to  employ  the  free  and  homely  idioms  of  prose.  The  western 
literature  in  its  entirety  is  a  novel  product,  quite  without 
traditions,  as  new  as  the  surroundings  and  the  society  which 
it  reflects.  That  which  Walt  Whitman  expressly  stood  for — 
sheer  democracy,  the  leveling  of  class  distinctions  and  the 
uncompromising  assertion  of  the  individual — finds  here  a 
natural  emphasis.  College  men  are  very  decidedly  in  the 
minority.  Farming,  mining,  lumbering,  trapping,  scouting, 
at  the  highest  journalism  and  local  law  or  politics,  furnished 
the  education  of  the  western  pioneer.  Many  a  western 
"man  of  letters"  has  ploughed  corn,  "punched"  cattle, 
sluiced  gold,  or  travelled  about  the  country  with  a  peddler's 
cart.  Men  of  culture  from  the  East  found  their  way  to  the 
West,  but  not  in  sufficient  numbers  to  change  materially  the 
character  of  its  early  literature.  Prestige  was  from  the  first 
disregarded,  culture  often  held  in  scorn.  It  is  manifest  that 
a  literature  of  this  type  must  be  gauged  by  somewhat  altered 
standards.  Yet  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  it  is  precisely 
this  which  the  future  will  select  as  the  most  vital  and  char- 

276 


CLEMENS  277 

acteristic  literary  product  of  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  the  United  States. 

One  of  the  writers  of  this  western  school,  who,  though 
long  famous,  was  rather  slowly  conceded  the  dignified  posi 
tion  due  him  was  Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens, 
i835-i9i<Kens'universally  known  as  "Mark  Twain."  He  was 
born  in  Missouri  in  1835.  Avoiding  with  con 
siderable  success  even  a  common  school  education,  he  got  his 
first  literary  training,  like  Franklin,  Taylor,  Whitman,  and 
Howells,  at  the  printer's  case.  For  a  while  he  was  a  tramp 
printer  and  for  a  while  a  pilot  on  the  Mississippi.  In  1861 
he  went  to  Nevada,  where  he  became  an  editor  of  the  Vir 
ginia  City  Enterprise.  He  engaged  in  mining,  too;  and  push 
ing  still  farther  west,  pursued  both  mining  and  newspaper 
work  in  California.  In  1866  he  visited  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
and  finding  upon  his  return  that  his  humorous  sketches  in  the 
San  Francisco  newspapers  had  given  him  a  local  fame,  he 
began  lecturing.  In  1867  he  went  east,  published  The  Jump 
ing  Frog  and  Other  Sketches,  and  then  made  the  European 
tour  which  resulted  in  the  book  that  won  him  a  national 
fame,  Innocents  Abroad  (1869).  After  that  he  pursued  a 
steady  literary  career,  and  the  names  of  his  many  books  are 
so  familiar  as  scarcely  to  require  recording.  He  also  travelled 
and  lectured  extensively,  especially  in  his  later  years,  success 
fully  laboring  with  a  heroism  that  reminds  one  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  to  remove  a  debt  incurred  by  the  failure  of  a  publishing 
house  which  he  founded. 

Clemens's  best  works  connect  themselves  directly  with 
his  early  experiences  in  the  West.  Roughing  It  (1872),  for 
example,  The  Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer  (1876),  and  Life  on 
the  Mississippi  (1883),  are  chapters  out  of  the  very  heart  of 
that  life  to  which  he  had  lived  as  close  as  a  man  may  live. 
This  is  their  first  claim  to  excellence.  Their  second  claim  lies 
in  the  emphasis  which  they  lay  upon  one  of  the  most  charac- 


278  PROSE   AND    POETRY   IN   THE    WEST 

teristic  phases  of  that  life,  namely,  its  rough  humor.  Mark 
Twain,  indeed,  will  always  be  known  as  a  humorist.  A  single 
serious  work,  like  his  Personal  Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc, 
cannot  make  against  this  estimate.  He,  more  than  any  other 
one  person,  has  given  late  American  humor  the  distinctive 
name  it  enjoys.  Unfortunately,  this  very  quality,  which 
insured  his  popularity,  brought  also  for  a  time  the  severest 
criticism.  The  humor  is  a  little  coarse  for  the  readers  of  an 
age  that  shrinks  from  Rabelais  and  Swift.  It  might  have 
passed  in  the  days  of  Irving;  it  was  pretty  sure  to  be  chal 
lenged  after  the  delicate  wit  of  Lowell  and  Holmes.  More 
over,  it  possesses  some  unpleasant  American  characteristics. 
Innocents  Abroad,  for  example,  has  in  it  not  a  little  of  that 
irreverence  which  Americans  often  betray  in  the  presence  of 
sacred  old  world  scenes  and  institutions.  But  there  is  always 
one  thing  in  its  favor.  There  is  little  torturing  of  the  fancy, 
as  in  some  of  our  minor  humorists,  to  make  every  sentence 
yield  a  laugh.  The  humor  is  of  the  most  genuine  kind — 
spontaneous  and  irresistible.  A  man  could  not  stand  before 
the  public  so  many  years  as  Mark  Twain  did,  bearing  the 
most  difficult  of  reputations  to  sustain,  if  humor  were  not 
of  his  very  essence.  Besides,  his  humor  has  mostly  a  purpose 
beyond  the  flash  of  wit.  Pure  drollery  carried  Artemus 
Ward  into  a  deserved  reputation.  But  Twain  goes  beyond 
pure  fooling.  .Even  Innocents  Abroad,  by  no  means  his  best 
book,  has  served  a  good  end  by  turning  to  ridicule  the  sham 
enthusiasm  of  the  routine  tourist  and  the  innocence  of  the 
over-gullible.  It  is  true,  Twain  liked  to  disclaim  any  such 
object.  "Anybody  who  seeks  a  moral  in  this  story,"  he  said 
of  Huckleberry  Finn,  "will  be  shot."  Nor  are  his  stories  ever 
very  coherent,  for  constructiveness  is  not  among  his  gifts. 
But  in  general  they  have  a  perceptible  drift,  and  the  fun  that 
enters  into  them  is  there  not  wholly  for  its  own  sake,  but 
because  it  is  an  organic  part  of  the  conception :  it  often  sinks 


HARTE  279 

to  a  subordinate  element  or  even  disappears  in  the  presence 
of  a  higher  purpose,  and  the  writer  becomes  in  turn  a  story 
teller,  a  satirist,  or  a  moralist. 

Finally — and  it  is  perhaps  on  this  that  Twain's  claim  to 
serious  consideration  is  best  founded — he  was  a  genuine 
creator  of  character.  A  national  literature  can  scarcely 
deserve  the  name  until  it  has  created  characters  which  are 
seen  to  typify  in  the  largest  and  best  sense  national  traits. 
American  literature  has  nothing  to  compare  with  the  Greek 
Ulysses.  Our  national  traits  may  be  too  many  and  diverse 
to  be  comprehended  in  one  person,  and  we  may  have  to  be 
content  with  here  and  there  a  Long  Tom  Coffin,  a  Hosea 
Biglow,  a  Jack  Hamlin,  a  Silas  Lapham,  a  Colonel  Carter. 
Even  thus,  our  literature  seems  poor  in  real  characters.  But 
among  the  most  satisfying  are  to  be  reckoned  those  two 
incarnations  of  "Young  America"  on  the  frontier,  those 
heroes  of  the  "Odyssey  of  the  Mississippi," — Tom  Sawyer 
and  Huckleberry  Finn. 

The  story  of  Francis  Bret  Harte  is  somewhat  similar  in  its 

main  features  to  that  of  Mark  Twain.     Born  at  Albany,  New 

York,  in  1836,  Harte  went  early  to  California, 

Francis  111  • 

?8?6  So2e'  wnere  ne  became  successively  engaged  in  teaching, 
mining,  and  writing.  His  Condensed  Novels  (1867) 
were  first  published  in  The  Calif ornian,  of  which  journal  he 
was  editor.  In  1868  he  became  editor  of  the  newly  founded 
Overland  Monthly,  and  in  it  were  published  his  famous  story, 
The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  and  several  years  later  his  equally 
famous  poem,  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James  (otherwise 
known  as  The  Heathen  Chinee) .  Then,  like  Mark  Twain,  he 
followed  his  fame  east,  and  after  spending  some  years  in  the 
consular  service  in  Germany  and  Scotland,  writing  steadily  in 
the  meantime,  he  finally  settled  down  at  London,  where  he 
continued  to  write  tales  of  the  days  of  California  before 
the  Pacific  Railway.  East  and  West  Poems  (1871),  Tales  of 


280  PROSE   AND    POETRY   IN   THE    WEST 

the  Argonauts  (1875),  Gabriel  Conroy  (1876),  Snow-Bound  at 
Eagle's  (1886),  and  Colonel  Starbottle's  Client  (1892),  are  a 
few  of  his  more  than  forty  published  volumes. 

Harte  has  commonly  been  classed  with  the  poets,  and 
the  striking  originality  and  occasional  beauty  of  his  poems 
give  him  a  deserved  place  in  that  category.  But  it  is  doubtful 
whether  any  but  the  one  poem  mentioned  above  will  live  as 
long  as  will  his  prose  idyls  of  that  wild  western  life,  all  of 
which  he  knew  and  a  part  of  which  he  was.  It  cannot  be  said 
that  his  later  work  sustained  his  early  reputation;  that  was 
scarcely  to  be  expected,  since  the  novelty  wore  off  and  the 
writer's  memory  grew  dimmed  by  time  and  distance.  But 
his  early  reputation  was  well  won.  He  was  our  real  pioneer 
in  the  field  of  the  short  story — the  story  of  strong  realism 
reinforced  by  local  color  and  piquant  dialect;  and  the  best 
writers  in  this  kind  at  the  present  day,  among  them  Mr.  Kip 
ling,  are  deeply  indebted  to  him.  Certain  things  can  easily  be 
charged  against  his  work.  Dickens  thought  it  subtle  in  char- 
acter  delineation,  but  Dickens  himself  was  scarcely  subtle, 
and  Harte's  method  was  not  unlike  Dickens's  in  its  tendency 
toward  grotesqueness.  Moreover,  there  is  in  Harte  an  appar 
ent  distortion  of  moral  perspective,  an  exaggeration  of  the 
value  of  two  or  three  virtues,  such  as  courage,  sympathy,  and 
sincerity,  to  the  complete  ignoring  of  others.  But  the  por 
trayal  is  essentially  true  to  the  life  portrayed — the  mixed 
society  of  adventurers,  gamblers,  desperadoes,  and  "rough 
but  honest"  men  and  women.  One  feels  as  he  reads  that  it 
was  thus  that  John  Oakhurst  and  Jack  Hamlin  and  Miggles 
lived  and  thought.  Harte,  like  Twain,  declared  that  he 
abstained  from  any  positive  moral.  He  gave  the  bad  with 
the  good,  though  with  the  natural  result  that  the  good  gains 
immensely  by  the  juxtaposition.  Indeed,  one  secret  of  his 
charm  is  the  way  in  which  his  vivid  pictures  of  vileness,  disso 
luteness,  squalor,  and  misery  are  illuminated  by  deeds  of  the 


MILLER  281 

tenderest  charity  and  the  highest  heroism.  The  Outcasts  of 
Poker  Flat,  How  Santa  Clous'  Came  to  Simpson's  Bar,  Tennes 
see's  Partner,  and  a  dozen  more,  bear  testimony  to  this. 
The  stories  are  related,  too,  with  dramatic  skill,  and  with  full 
appreciation  of  their  romantic  and  poetic  setting.  It  is  hard 
to  review  these  scenes  and  characters  of  a  bygone  era,  still  so 
fresh  and  full  of  life,  and  not  feel  that  Harte  has  done  some 
what  more  than  merely  gather  the  materials,  as  he  modestly 
put  it,  "for  an  Iliad  yet  to  be  sung."  The  Argonauts  of 
forty-nine  have  had  their  bard. 

Aside  from  Bret  Harte,  whose  fame,  as  just  stated,  is  more 
likely  to  rest  upon  his  prose  than  upon  his  verse,  Joaquin  Mil 
ler,  "the  poet  of  the  Sierras,"  stands  out  as  the 

Joaquin 

M4ilei9i3  Poet  most  characteristic  of  the  far  West.  His  par 
ents  named  him  Cincinnatus  Heine  Miller,  but  he 
preferred  to  rechristen  himself  with  the  name  of  a  Mexi 
can  bandit,  Joaquin  Murietta,  the  subject  of  one  of  his  poems. 
He  lived  to  the  full  the  life  of  an  adventurer  and  pioneer. 
He  went  from  Indiana  to  Oregon  when  he  was  thirteen, 
worked  in  the  California  gold  mines,  and  spent  some  time 
with  an  Indian  tribe.  Later  he  studied  law  and  became  a 
judge  in  eastern  Oregon.  In  1870  he  went  to  England,  where 
he  was  warmly  received  as  a  new  and  picturesque  poet  out  of 
the  West.  He  published  Songs  of  the  Sierras  in  1871,  Songs 
of  the  Sunlands  in  1873,  and  other  volumes  in  subsequent 
years.  The  D unites  in  the  Sierras,  a  novel,  has  been  success 
fully  dramatized.  Returning  to  the  West,  he  continued  his 
adventurous  career.  In  1898  he  went  to  the  Klondike,  not 
for  gold,  for  which  he  always  professed  a  fine  contempt,  but 
to  be  again  with  the  vanguard  of  pioneers.  The  trouble  in 
China  in  1900  also  found  him  at  the  scene  of  activity  as  a 
newspaper  correspondent.  But  while  Miller  maintained  a 
certain  prominence  in  the  ranks  of  journalism,  he  scarcely 
made  good  his  early  claim  to  serious  consideration  as  a  poet. 


282  PROSE   AND    POETRY   IN   THE    WEST 

Too  many  allowances  must  be  made  for  his  poetry.  Lyrical 
before  all  else,  it  is  exasperatingly  careless — unsymmetrical 
and  diffuse.  It  is  overwrought  in  imagery,  and  makes  use 
of  all  the  Swinburnian  devices  of  assonance  and  alliteration 
without  showing  Swinburne's  fine  instinct  for  harmony. 
The  most  that  can  be  said  in  praise  of  it  is  that  it  has  glimpses 
of  wild  beauty  with  here  and  there  a  passage  that  is  genuinely 
melodious,  as  in  Sunrise  in  Venice  and  The  Rhyme  of  the 
Great  River,  and  that  it  breathes  a  spirit  of  rude  chivalry, 
espousing  with  proud  indiscrimination  the  cause  of  all  the 
poor,  the  outcast,  and  the  oppressed. 

Two  writers,  who,  though  brought  up  in  New  England  and 
showing  the  strongest  affiliations  with  the  eastern  school,  are 

yet  commonly  classed  with  the  writers  of  the  West 
?8<X- 18*87.  because  their  most  significant  work  was  done  there 

are  Edward  Rowland  Sill  and  Helen  Fiske  Jack 
son.  Sill  was  a  native  of  Connecticut  and  a  graduate  of 
Yale  who  went  to  California  by  sea  in  1862,  and  remained 
there,  with  the  exception  of  four  years  spent  in  journalism 
and  teaching  in  New  York  and  Ohio,  until  1883.  He  held 
for  some  years  the  chair  of  English  literature  in  the  University 
of  California.  Four  years  after  his  second  return  to  the  East 
he  died,  at  Cuyahoga  Falls,  Ohio.  Three  slender  collections 
of  his  poems  have  been  published — one  in  1868,  one  in  the 
year  of  his  death,  and  one  in  1899.  There  is  also  a  posthu 
mous  volume  of  prose,  containing  essays  on  nature,  litera 
ture,  psychology,  etc.  Sill  is  readily  seen  to  have  been  a  true 
singer,  though  of  the  minor  choir.  He  did  nothing  of  large 
scope.  His  longest  poem,  The  Hermitage,  is  rather  a  series 
of  short  poems.  The  Venus  of  Milo  is  about  twice  as  long  as 
Thanatopsis.  The  other  poems  do  not  commonly  exceed 
half  a  dozen  stanzas.  Seldom,  too,  is  the  lyric  quality 
striking.  It  is  their  compressed  thought  that  gives  the  poems 
distinction.  There  is  neither  mediocrity  of  substance  nor 


SILL,    HELEN   F.   JACKSON  283 

diffuseness  of  expression.  Here  and  there  is  a  note  that  is 
strongly  Emersonian.  The  most  characteristic  thing,  how 
ever,  is  a  quality  not  Emersonian, — a  haunting  sense  of 
the  tragi-comedy  of  human  life,  a  restlessness  in  the  pres 
ence  of  its  mysteries,  and  even  a  tendency  to  brood  upon 
the  major  mystery  of  death.  At  one  time,  with  a  cheery 
recall  to  the  primitive  simplicities, 

"Life  is  a  game  the  soul  can  play 
With  fewer  pieces  than  men  say," 

but  at  another,  "Life  is  a  blindfold  game."  Thus  one  cannot 
safely  go  to  these  poems  for  rest.  But  Life,  The  Fool's 
Prayer,  Opportunity,  The  Invisible,  Two  Views  of  It,  Strange, 
Truth  at  Last,  and  many  more,  show  that  Sill  had  some 
glimpses  behind  the  curtain  which  he  is  willing  to  share  with 
those  who  are  prepared  for  either  chance — to  shudder  or  to 
smile. 

Mrs.  Helen  Fiske  Jackson,  long  known  as  Helen  Hunt  or 
"H.  H.,"  at  one  time  wife  of  Captain  Hunt  of  the  United 
States  Army  and  later  of  Mr.  Jackson,  a  banker  of 
Jackson,  Colorado  Springs,  was  born  at  Amherst,  Massa 
chusetts,  and  spent  only  the  last  years  of  her  life 
in  the  West.  The  earlier  part  of  her  life,  and  especially  the 
sorrows  with  which  it  was  clouded,  found  expression  in 
poetry.  She  published  a  volume  of  verse  in  1870;  and  it 
seems  not  too  much  to  say  of  such  of  her  poems  as  Spinning, 
Coronation,  or  the  sonnets  Morn  and  Thought,  that  they 
evince  a  higher  imagination  than  those  of  any  other  American 
woman  poet  except  her  fellow  townswoman,  fimily  Dickin 
son.  But  she  lived  to  write  a  novel  that  set  her  name, 
with  the  multitude  at  least,  in  a  higher  place,  and  her  fame 
will  henceforth  be  most  closely  associated  with  that.  After 
her  removal  to  Colorado  she  became  interested  in  the  con 
dition  of  the  American  Indians  and  their  ill  treatment  by 


284  PROSE   AND    POETRY   IN   THE    WEST 

government  agents,  and  in  1881  published  a  protest  in  their 
behalf  (A  Century  of  Dishonor),  which  led  to  her  appoint 
ment  as  special  examiner  to  the  mission  Indians  of  Cali 
fornia.  The  final  outcome  was  the  composition  and  publi 
cation  of  her  novel,  Ramona,  in  1884.  Ramona  scarcely 
needs  description,  any  more  than  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  It  was 
written  in  the  same  sincere  philanthropic  spirit,  and  although, 
like  Mrs.  Stowe's  book,  or  Cooper's  novels,  it  idealizes 
somewhat  the  objects  of  its  defence,  such  idealization  is 
surely  pardonable.  Artistically  considered,  it  is  one  of  the 
finest  creations  of  our  fiction — a  romance  so  infused  with 
tropic  warmth  and  glow,  and  so  permeated  with  human 
sympathy,  that  its  pictures  of  Arcadian  life  in  old  California 
and  the  gentle  figures  of  Ramona,  Alessandro,  and  Father 
Salvierderra  will  not  easily  fade. 

The  Middle  West,  in  its  entire  expanse  from  the  Ohio  Val 
ley  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  was  rather  slower  than  the 
Pacific  Slope  to  bring  forth  either  prose  or  poetry. 
?8U5o!?8e95!eld'  But  with  men  like  Mark  Twain,  already  men 
tioned,  and  the  late  William  Vaughn  Moody,  it 
has  fairly  equalled  the  score.  Two  other  writers,  moreover, 
though  inferior  to  these,  have  produced  work  of  a  distinctive 
character.  One  was  Eugene  Field,  who  was  born  at  St.  Louis 
and  who,  during  his  too  short  life,  was  a  hard-working 
journalist  in  various  cities  of  the  west  from  Denver  to 
Chicago.  He  did  his  latest  and  best  work  at  Chicago.  He 
had  a  scholarly  mind,  which  revealed  itself  in  his  most 
trifling  hack  work;  and  he  made  some  delightful  free  trans 
lations  and  paraphrases  of  Horace  (Echoes  from  the  Sabine 
Farm,  with  R.  M.  Field,  1893).  A  true  bibliophile,  he  wrote 
much  upon  the  love  of  books.  But  the  love  of  children 
called  forth  his  best  work,  and  his  poems  thus  inspired,  easily 
comparable  to  Stevenson's  in  their  mingled  quaintness, 
humor,  and  pathos,  are  scarcely  second  to  any  in  the  Ian- 


FIELD  2So 

guage.     Little  Boy  Blue,  Wynken,  Blynken,  and  Nod,  and  half 
a  dozen  others  have  already  become  classics. 

The  name  to  be  linked  with  Field's  is  that  of  James 

W],iitcomb   Riley,    of   Indiana,    another   typical   rover   and 

journalist.     He    was    born    in    a    small    country 

James  Whit-    J  .11 

comb  Riley,  town  and  received  only  a  common  school  educa 
tion.  He  once  served  as  drummer  in  the  concert- 
wagon  of  an  itinerant  patent-medicine  seller.  At  the  age  of 
twenty  he  began  printing  verses  in  the  newspapers,  which  in 
time  brought  him  both  fame  and  what,  no  doubt,  he  prized 
far  more,  a  very  warm  place  in  the  hearts  of  a  multitude  of 
readers.  For  his  poetry  sprang  from  his  simple  rustic  life 
and  reflected  it  faithfully,  not  only  in  its  outward  features  of 
blading  corn  and  showering  blossoms,  but  also  in  its  intimate 
joys  and  sorrows.  He  often  adopted  the  homely  Hoosier 
dialect  as  a  medium,  and  though,  as  he  employs  it,  it  is  not 
without  a  suspicion  of  artificiality  and  mannerism,  the 
genuineness  of  the  underlying  sentiments  cannot  be  doubted, 
and  poems  like  Nothin'  to  Say,  and  Knee-Deep  in  June  go 
straight  as  an  arrow  to  their  mark.  His  first  volume  was 
The  Old  Swimmin  Hole  and  'Leven  More  Poems  (1883), 
followed  by  fully  a  score  of  similar  nature.  As  with  all 
successful  poets  of  the  people,  humor  and  pathos  enter 
largely  into  the  substance  of  Riley's  verse.  He  partakes, 
moreover,  of  that  fundamental  optimism  that  seems  to  be 
almost  a  birthright  of  the  American  people,  and  expresses  it 
time  and  again — nowhere,  perhaps,  more  tersely  and  sponta 
neously  than  in  A  Life  Lesson,  "  There,  little  girl — don't  cry ! " 
In  William  Vaughn  Moody,  also  of  Indiana,  America 
seemed  to  find  once  more  a  poet  endowed  with  the  greater 
gifts.  Moody  received  his  education  at  Harvard,  and  was  a 
teacher  of  English  literature  at  the  University  of  Chicago 
until  a  short  time  before  his  death.  His  published  volumes 
consisted  of  two  lyrical  dramas,  The  Masque  of  Judgment 


286  PROSE  AND  POETRY  IN  THE  WEST 

(1900)  and  The  Fire  Bringer  (1904),  Poems,  (1901),  and  two 
prose  plays,  The  Great  Divide  (1907)  and  The  Faith-Healer 
William  (1909).  His  work  often  betrays  somewhat  ob- 
MocSiy?  viously  its  models,  for  he  was  naturally  familiar 
>10'  with  the  greatest  English  verse  and  deeply  im 
mersed  in  its  traditions ;  especially  did  the  poets  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  leave  their  mark  upon  him.  Nowhere,  however, 
is  there  weak  imitation — in  the  high  quality  of  his  gifts  he 
belongs  to  their  company;  and  it  may  even  be  set  to  his 
credit  that  he  did  not  seek  after  novelty  of  expression,  but 
was  content  to  cast  his  matter  in  classic  molds.  His  imag 
ination  never  deserts  him.  He  listens,  for  instance,  to  the 
voice  of  an  Italian  street-singer,  and  is  straightway  carried 
to  the  land  of  the  singer's  and  the  poet's  love : 

"Up  stairways  blue  with  flowering  weed 
I  climb  to  hill-hung  Bergamo; 
All  day  I  watch  the  thunder  breed 
Golden  above  the  springs  of  Po, 
Till  the  voice  makes  sure  its  wavering  lure, 
And  by  Assisi's  portals  pure 
I  stand,  with  heart  bent  low." 

This,  however,  is  but  a  modest  flight;  for  the  full  sweep  of  his 
imagination  and  its  power  to  reach  the  hidden  recesses  of  the 
human  spirit,  one  should  turn  to  the  lyrical  dramas,  or  to 
such  poems  as  Gloucester  Moors  and  An  Ode  in  the  Time  of 
Hesitation.  The  latter,  which  is  easily  to  be  compared  with 
Lowell's  Commemoration  Ode,  is  the  best  poem  called  forth 
by  the  Spanish-American  war  and  the  occupation  of  the 
Philippines.  Some  of  its  lines  glow  with  all  the  descriptive 
beauty  of  Shelley,  and  others  ring  with  the  moral  indignation 
of  Milton.  By  his  lyrical  dramas,  too,  and  The  Great  Divide, 
which  has  been  successfully  acted,  Moody  did  much  to  give 
weight  and  dignity  to  a  species  of  literature  in  which  America 
still  compares  very  unfavorably  with  the  Old  World. 


M  OOD  Y  287 

Other  writers  of  the  Middle  and  Far  West  come  readily  to 
mind.  There  is  Edwin  Markham,  of  Oregon  and  California, 
who  sprang  into  fame  with  his  over-praised  poem,  The  Man 
with  the  Hoe,  but  who,  before  that,  was  the  author  of  many  a 
genuine  lyric  unf retted  with  sense  of  social  wrong.  And  to 
go  back  almost  to  an  earlier  generation  there  are,  or  were, 
John  Hay,  the  Piatts,  Richard  Realf,  and  more.  But  here 
it  is  safest  to  pause.  The  anthologies  will  winnow  out  such 
productions  of  these  as  have  any  permanent  significance. 
The  later  novelists  remain,  and  in  them,  possibly,  the  hope 
of  the  coming  literature  of  this  section  now  lies ;  but  none  of 
them  as  yet  call  for  special  treatment  and  the  mention  of 
whatever  promise  they  reveal  will  be  reserved  for  another 
place. 


CHAPTER  X 
POETRY  AND   CRITICISM  IN  THE   EAST 

The  later  literature  of  the  north  and  middle  Atlantic  states 
stands  forth  in  no  such  clear  outlines  as  that  of  either  the 
South  or  the  West.  In  this  eastern  region,  of  course,  the  suc 
cession  was  never  entirely  broken,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  sepa 
rate  later  writers  from  earlier,  especially  since  the  later  largely 
uphold  familiar  traditions,  standing  for  the  inherited  ideals  of 
dignity,  scholarship,  refinement,  taste,  and  finish.  But  a  dif 
ference  in  quality  may  be  detected,  possibly  because  the  later 
writers  have  suffered  from  the  very  fact  of  having  clung  to 
their  inheritance.  The  old  veins  were  worked  out  and  new 
ones  were  not  found.  The  earlier  writers,  too,  many  of 
whom  lived  on  into  an  active  old  age,  overshadowing  their 
natural  successors,  were  natively  superior  in  all  points  of 
genius.  In  the  field  of  poetry  in  particular,  the  very  best  of 
the  later  writers  have  been  the  readiest  to  recognize  the  easy 
pre-eminence  of  the  elder  group;  so  that,  feeling  no  insistent 
voice  within  and  finding  no  encouraging  demand  from  with 
out,  they  have  produced  sparingly  and  are  even  disposed,  as 
the  years  go  by,  to  reduce  the  bulk  of  their  acknowledged 
product.  Another  restraining  factor  which  must  doubtless 
be  taken  into  account  is  the  gradual  encroachment  of  the 
virile  and  picturesque  literature  of  the  South  and  the  West, 
which  the  East  itself  has  been  prone  to  treat  lightly,  but 
which  has  sometimes  penetrated  more  readily  into  the 
centres  of  European  culture  than  anything  the  conservative 
East  has  produced. 

Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  was  one  of  the  first  of  the  eastern 
succession  to  publish,  and  pursued  his  career  with  singular 
devotion.  He  was  born  in  New  Hampshire,  passed  a  part 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    CABLE 
FRANCIS    BRET    HARTE 


WILLIAM    DEAN    HOWELLS 
SAMUEL    LANGHORNE    CLEMENS 


ALDRICH  289 

of  his  youth  in  Louisiana,  and,  foregoing  a  college  education, 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  entered  journalism  at  New  York, 
where  he  won  the  friendship  of  Willis  and  became 
'  associated  with  Taylor,  Stoddard,  and  Stedman. 
There,  before  he  was  twenty,  he  wrote  the  pathe 
tic  Ballad  of  Babie  Bell,  and  also  published  his  first  volume  of 
verse,  The  Bells  (1854).  A  few  years  later  he  removed  to 
Boston  and  became  an  integral  part  of  the  literary  life  of  New 
England.  Lowell,  the  first  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
had  welcomed  his  contributions  to  that  magazine,  and  in 
1881  Aldrich  found  himself  in  the  editor's  chair  with  Lowell  as 
his  contributor.  He  remained  editor  of  the  Atlantic  for  nine 
years,  and  his  contributions  to  it  number  over  a  hundred. 
His  poems  have  appeared  in  many  successive  volumes  and 
editions. 

Though  Aldrich  worked  with  comparative  ease  in  a 
variety  of  forms,  from  the  sonnet  to  dramatic  blank  verse, 
he  was  at  his  best  in  lyrics  of  sentiment  and  fancy  and  the 
polished  trifles  that  go  to  make  up  "society  verse."  One 
critic  has  ventured  to  say  that  he  recalls  the  English  Herrick. 
He  has  some  characteristics  in  common  with  Longfellow. 
But  Longfellow's  simplicity  is  often  replaced  in  Aldrich  by  a 
greater  subtlety  of  thought  and  overlaid  with  a  more  elabo 
rate  art.  His  romantic  fancy,  too,  has  more  of  the  far  East 
in  it  than  Longfellow's.  Like  Stoddard,  he  fell  under  the 
influence  of  Taylor's  travel-enriched  fancy,  and  he  affects 
strains  that  are  "blent  with  odors  from  the  Orient."  His 
Dressing  the  Bride  and  When  the  Sultan  Goes  to  Ispahan  are 
replete  with  color  and  all  sensuous  appeals.  He  is  better 
known,  however,  by  such  simpler  lyrics  as  Babie  Bell,  Before 
the  Rain,  and  The  Face  Against  the  Pane. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  forgotten  that  Aldrich  immensely  widened 
his  audience  by  those  prose  tales  with  which,  in  middle  life,  he 
began  to  vary  the  product  of  his  pen,  and  which  are  marked 


290  POETRY   AND    CRITICISM   IN   THE   EAST 

by  the  same  daintiness  and  artistic  charm  as  his  poetry,  sup 
plemented  with  a  rare  quality  of  humor.  The  Story  of  a  Bad 
Boy  (1870),  Marjorie  Daw  (1873),  and  Two  Bites  at  a  Cherry 
(1893)  are  all  well  known.  The  first,  largely  drawn  from 
memories  of  Portsmouth,  the  city  of  his  birth,  has  become  a 
classic  "juvenile;"  it  was  a  forerunner  of  various  books  in  a 
similar  vein,  notably  Warner's  Being  a  Boy  and  Howells's  A 
Boy's  Town.  The  second,  Marjorie  Daw,  ranks  among  the 
very  best  short  stories  written  by  American  authors. 

Classification  and  comparison,  in  the  case  of  a  poet  like 

Emily  Dickinson,  avail  nothing.     She  was  modern;  beyond 

that  the  chances  of  time  and  place  do  not  signify; 

Dickinson,      her  life  and  her  poetry  were  equally  remote  from 

1830-1886o  PI  TT 

the  ways  01  others.  H'er  years  were  passed  in 
seclusion  at  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  where  her  father  was 
treasurer  of  Amherst  College.  Her  scanty  verses,  a  kind  of 
soul's  diary,  written  with  no  thought  of  publication,  becahie 
known  to  a  few  friends,  and  after  much  persuasion  she  allowed 
two  or  three  to  be  published  during  her  life- time.  A  volume 
was  published  only  after  her  death,  in  1890.  The  poems 
baffle  description.  They  seldom  have  titles,  and  sometimes 
no  more  words  than  poets  three  centuries  ago  put  into  their 
titles,  for  she  pours  her  words  as  a  chemist  his  tinctures, 
fearful  of  a  drop  too  much.  Two  stanzas,  of  four  lines  each, 
imperfectly  rhymed,  and  with  about  four  words  to  the  line, 
are  her  favorite  form.  A  fourteen-line  sonnet  is  spacious  by 
the  side  of  such  poems.  Yet  few  sonnets  have  ever  com 
pressed  so  much  within  their  bounds.  To  read  one  is  to  be 
given  a  pause  that  will  outlast  the  reading  of  many  sonnets; 
for  they  come  with  revelation,  like  a  flash  of  lightning  that 
illuminates  a  landscape  by  night  and  startles  with  glimpses 
into  an  unimagined  world.  They  bear  witness  in  every  word 
to  their  high  inspiration.  But  stamped  though  they  be  with 
the  celestial  signature,  they  are  but  fragments,  and  in  the 


EMILY   DICKINSON,    STEDMAN  291 

temple  of  art,  which  keeps  its  niches  for  the  perfect  statue, 
they  must  shine  obscurely. 

Turning  to  New  York,  we  are  met  at  once  by  a  well- 
known  writer  already  several  times  named  in  this  history — 

Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  the  poet-critic,  and 
man,  friend  of  nearly  all  the  literary  men  of  New  York 

in  his  time.  He  was  slightly  the  senior  of  Aldrich, 
whom  he  knew  before  Aldrich  went  to  Boston,  and  slightly 
the  junior  of  the  New  York  and  Philadelphia  group  of  poet- 
journalists — Taylor,  Stoddard,  Boker,  etc.  He  was  born 
at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  his  brief  college  course  of  two 
years  was  taken  at  Yale.  His  newspaper  life  in  New  York 
began  in  1855,  and  for  several  years  during  the  Civil  War  he 
was  war  correspondent  of  the  New  York  World,  gaining 
experience  which  he  subsequently  turned  to  good  account  in 
his  verse.  His  later  life  was  spent  mainly  on  the  Stock 
Exchange,  a  career  in  which  he  managed  to  find  leisure  for 
his  seldom  interrupted  literary  pursuits.  His  poems  com 
prise  Poems  Lyric  and  Idyllic  (I860),  Alice  of  Monmouth  (1863), 
The  Blameless  Prince  (1869),  Hawthorne,  and  Other  Poems 
(1877),  and  later  lyrics  and  idyls. 

Stedman,  like  most  of  his  associates,  is  to  be  classed  with 
the  poets  of  the  artist  type — the  poets  whose  creative  impulse 
is  never  so  strong  as  to  make  them  forget  the  requirements  of 
technical  perfection.  But  Stedman  chooses  his  themes  rather 
nearer  to  the  ordinary  interests  of  life  than,  for  instance,  Aid- 
rich:  he  likes  narrative  and  dramatic  as  well  as  lyric  themes. 
By  virtue  of  How  Old  Brown  Took  Harper's  Ferry,  Alice  of 
Monmouth,  Wanted — A  Man,  and  Gettysburg,  he  became  one 
more  of  our  laureates  of  the  great  war.  Yet  he  is  never  a 
passionate  singer.  Even  heroic  deeds  are  likely  to  receive  at 
his  hands  the  highly  artistic  treatment  which  results  in  the 
idyl,  and  this,  as  his  titles  show,  is  one  of  his  favorite  forms 
of  poetry.  At  times,  his  fancy  played  with  lighter  occa- 


292  POETRY   AND    CRITICISM   IN   THE   EAST 

sional  and  bohemian  verse.  The  city  found  him  a  sympathetic 
bard,  and  a  wandering  organ-grinder  called  forth  a  unique 
poem  of  genuine  inspiration — Pan  in  Wall  Street. 

Stedman's  later  energies  were  mostly  given  over  to  crit 
ical  work,  and  he  published  Victorian  Poets  (1875),  Poets 
of  America  (1885),  and  The  Nature  and  Elements  of  Poetry 
(1892),  with  their  accompanying  Anthologies.  By  these 
works,  with  their  poetic  sympathy  and  insight,  sane  judg 
ment,  luminous  style,  and  kindly,  sometimes  over-kindly, 
temper,  he  placed  himself  foremost  among  our  literary 
critics  after  Lowell.  His  service,  indeed  was  peculiarly 
great.  He  did  one  thing  that  Lowell  was  not  fitted  to  do. 
He  helped  to  put  criticism  on  a  fairly  definite  basis  without 
removing  it  from  the  realm  of  personal  taste  and  appre 
ciation.  Scholars  are  under  obligations  to  him  for  the  meas 
ure  of  order  which  he  introduced  into  the  chaos  of  minor 
contemporary  poetry,  while  many  a  young  student  owes  him 
a  debt  for  being  set  in  the  way  to  a  love  of  the  best  that  liter 
ature  can  afford. 

Among  writers  of  the  Middle  East  whose  work  has  been 
done  outside  of  the  cities,  perhaps  the  most  prominent  is 
John  Burroughs,  who  was  born  in  the  Catskill 
Burroughs,  region  of  New  York  in  1837.  Apart  from  a  few 
years  spent  in  teaching  and  as  a  Treasury  clerk 
at  Washington,  Burroughs  remained  devoted  to  the  country 
life  in  which  he  received  his  earliest  training.  His  writings, 
largely  the  fruits  of  his  studies  of  nature,  whether  of  the 
habits  of  birds  or  of  the  habits  of  berries,  which  he  loves  to 
cultivate,  inevitably  remind  us  of  those  of  Thoreau,  of 
whom  in  his  naturalist's  ardor  he  is  fully  the  equal.  But  he 
is  quite  without  Thoreau's  eccentricity  of  temper.  As  befits 
a  writer  of  the  later  time,  he  carries  with  him  more  of  the 
scientist's  spirit,  and  he  is  never  obtrusive  with  his  moraliz 
ing.  One  gets  from  him  undiluted  sunshine  and  field-odor 


BURROUGHS  293 

and  bird-song.  Wake-Robin  (1871),  Winter  Sunshine  (1875), 
Birds  and  Poets  (1877),  Locusts  and  Wild  Honey  (1879), 
Fresh  Fields  (1884),  reveal  in  their  titles  not  a  little  of  their 
character.  Burroughs  must  also  be  classed  as  a  literary 
critic  of  fine  perceptions  and  poetic  sympathies,  as  his  Indoor 
Studies  (1889)  shows.  He  was  one  of  the  earliest  defenders 
of  Walt  Whitman,  and  has  published  several  appreciative 
essays  upon  Whitman's  work.  Light  of  Day  (1900)  is  a  vol 
ume  of  religious  discussions.  To  the  general  public,  however, 
he  remains  the  naturalist,  and  he  has  been  a  potent  influence, 
after  Thoreau,  upon  the  large  body  of  writers  upon  outdoor 
subjects  who  at  present  enjoy  such  popularity. 

Here  might  follow  the  names  of  many  who  have  made 
later  New  York,  even  more  conspicuously  than  later  Boston,  a 
centre  of  literary  activity.  There  are  some,  like  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  poet,  and  sometime  editor  of  the  Century, 
who  long  ago  won  their  circle  of  admirers.  There  are  others, 
like  Bliss  Carman,  poet  of  "  Vagabondia,"  or  George  Edward 
Woodberry,  alternately  poet  and  critic,  or  Hamilton  Wright 
Mabie,  critic  and  engaging  essayist,  who  have  yearly  streng 
thened  their  claims  to  admiration.  And  there  is,  or  rather 
was,  one  in  particular,  who  drifted  from  the  West  into  the 
eastern  metropolis,  whom  it  is  difficult  not  to  praise  at  length, 
half  in  confidence  that  the  future  will  sustain  the  praise. 
But  though  Richard  Hovey  (1864-1900)  easily  surpassed  all 
the  younger  singers  of  New  York  in  the  native  gift  of  poetry, 
his  work  scarcely  bears  the  stamp  of  the  great  poet;  his  grasp 
upon  life  was  not  secure  enough  and  his  exuberant  fancy 
nearly  always  fell  short  of  the  true  shaping  imagination, 
dallying  with  mere  prettiness  or  wandering  into  regions  of 
obscurity  and  mysticism,  so  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  any 
further  exercise  of  his  powers  would  have  made  him  more 
than  death  has  now  left  him,  a  minor  singer.  Poetry  and 
criticism,  it  would  seem,  simply  hold  their  own  in  the  East, 


294  POETRY   AND    CRITICISM   IN   THE   EAST 

keeping  still  at  the  lower  level  where  they  were  left  by  the 
death  of  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and  Holmes.  There,  as  else 
where,  fiction  now  affords  the  preferred  outlet  of  creative 
activity. 


CHAPTER  XI 
LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

The  change  that  came  over  American  literature  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  most  perceptible  in 
the  method  and  spirit  of  its  fiction.  It  must  be  evident  to 
the  most  casual  observer  that  fiction  has  developed  out  of  all 
proportion  to  other  literary  forms,  until  now  the  novel 
furnishes  the  staple  leisure-reading  of  nearly  all  classes.  So 
rapid,  however,  has  been  this  development,  and  so  multi 
form  are  its  products,  which  change  form  almost  from  day  to 
day,  that  anything  like  a  history  of  the  movement  is  at  this 
stage  impossible.  The  most  that  can  be  done  is  to  indicate 
a  few  of  the  major  tendencies  and  to  put  on  record  a  few  of 
the  more  important  names. 

Foremost  among  the  changes  to  be  noted  has  been  the  rise 
of  what  is  commonly  known  as  realism.  This  has  been  pro 
fessedly  an  attempt  to  draw  nearer  to  the  conditions  of  real 
life.  Vagueness  of  scene,  abnormal  characters,  mysterious 
and  impossible  happenings,  have  been  abandoned  in  favor  of 
familiar  and  even  commonplace  scenes  and  events.  The  in 
terest  of  plot,  with  its  elements  of  surprise  and  terror,  has 
been  subordinated  to  the  interest  attaching  to  the  develop 
ment  of  character  in  the  midst  of  the  actual  problems  of 
existence.  In  short,  romanticism,  or  the  unrestrained  play  of 
fancy,  has  given  way  to  simple  fidelity  to  truth,  and  we' no 
longer  call  our  works  of  fiction  romances,  but  novels.  In  this 
matter  America  has  been  a  close  follower  in  the  footsteps  of 
Great  Britain.  The  change  from  Brown,  Cooper,  and  Poe 
through  Hawthorne,  Mrs.  Stowe,  and  Holmes,  to  Bret  Harte, 
Howells,  James,  and  Mrs.  Wharton,  may  be  likened  (though 
the  individual  comparisons  will  not  hold)  to  the  change  from 

295 


296  LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

Scott  and  Bulwer,  through  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Dickens 
to  Thackeray,  George  Eliot,  and  Meredith. 

Concomitant  with  this  development  of  the  novel  of  char 
acter,  of  social  problems,  and  of  realistic  scenes,  there  has  been 
a  marked  tendency  to  specialize  or  localize.  Every  profession 
and  occupation,  from  the  priest's  to  the  ward  politician's, 
from  the  banker's  to  the  burglar's,  has  been  thoroughly  ex 
ploited  by  the  industrious  novelist.  Every  section  of  the  coun 
try,  too,  from  the  lakes  and  pine  forests  of  northern  Maine 
to  the  deserts  and  orange  orchards  of  southern  California, 
has  found  or  seems  destined  to  find,  its  local  historian  in  the 
guise  of  a  writer  of  fiction.  This  has  gradually  led  to  a  more 
and  more  lavish  use  of  "local  color" — that  is,  technicalities  of 
profession  or  trade,  details  of  local  scenery,  and  above  all, 
provincial  dialect,  to  secure  which  the  novelist  often  goes 
deliberately  into  a  course  of  training.  Fiction  almost  ceases 
to  be  fiction  in  its  photographic  reproduction  of  unselected 
and  unarranged  facts.  It  is  clear  that  this  is  a  natural  but 
extreme  outgrowth  of  the  realistic  method.  There  is,  of 
course,  virtue  in-  local  color,  and  the  greatest  artist  need  not, 
perhaps  henceforth  may  not,  dispense  with  it.  But  it  cannot 
alone  carry  a  piece  of  fiction  beyond  the  temporary  popu 
larity  which  waits  on  novelty.  The  great  work  of  art  must 
portray,  under  whatever  local  and  temporary  guises,  univer 
sal  and  eternal  verities. 

Turning  from  the  character  of  this  late  fiction  to  its  form, 
we  note,  in  addition  to  the  novel  of  standard  length,  the  ex 
tremely  popular  "short  story."  The  main  characteristics 
of  the  short  story  are  the  same  as  those  of  the  novel,  except 
that,  instead  of  a  long  series  of  incidents,  but  a  single  situation 
is  presented,  or  at  the  most  two  or  three,  with  the  connecting 
incidents  omitted.  The  form  has  doubtless  grown  out  of 
the  tendency  toward  compression  which  marks  the  continued 
development  of  an  art,  and  is  fostered  by  the  spirit  of  an  age 


THE    SHORT   STORY  297 

that  is  restless  even  in  its  leisure.  It  has  been  further 
encouraged  by  the  rise  in  America  of  the  popular  monthly 
magazine,  which  depends  quite  as  much  upon  the  sale  of 
single  numbers  as  upon  annual  subscriptions.  It  is  not  to 
be  forgotten,  however,  that  the  short  story  had  an  early  par 
allel  in  the  romantic  tale,  which  bore  about  the  same  relation 
to  the  fully  developed  romance  as  the  short  story  bears  to  the 
novel;  and  the  tale,  as  perfected  by  Poe  and  Hawthorne,  is 
one  of  the  signal  achievements  of  American  letters.  It  was 
therefore  natural  that  the  short  story  should  attain  in  Ameri 
ca  a  high  development,  and  certainly  it  is  to  be  regarded,  in 
its  form  if  not  in  its  substance,  as  American  (and  French) 
rather  than  as  British.  Great  Britain  has  now  several 
masters  of  the  kind  in  the  persons  of  Thomas  Hardy,  Hud- 
yard  Kipling,  and  a  few  writers  of  the  Scotch  school,  but  a 
good  many  years  before  their  triumphs  the  form  was  being 
perfected  in  the  far  West  of  America  by  Bret  Harte,  to  say 
nothing  of  such  less  frequent  but  successful  eastern  experi 
menters  as  Hale  and  Aldrich. 

These  things  are  already  sufficiently  matters  of  history, 
but  beyond  these  it  would  be  difficult  to  go.  The  minor 
tendencies  in  fiction  of  the  present  time,  not  a  few  of  which 
are  easily  to  be  detected,  lack  as  yet  the  steadiness  of  a  dis 
tinct  drift  and  they  must  await  the  future  chronicler.  It 
remains  for  us  only  to  consider  a  few  of  the  late  novelists  who 
have  won  national  recognition.  Nor  can  there  be  anything 
like  a  careful  classification  of  these.  Many,  indeed,  who 
might  well  be  in  the  company,  have  already  been  considered. 
Holmes  himself  was  a  late  novelist,  but  other  considerations 
have  relegated  him  to  another  time  and  place.  So  with 
Hale,  Higginson,  Holland,  and  Warner.  So  with  Aldrich,  a* 
later  and  real  contemporary.  So  even  with  Clemens,  Mrs. 
Jackson,  and  Bret  Harte.  Clemens  came  to  fame  as  a 
humorist;  Mrs.  Jackson  was  a  poet,  and  her  one  novel  bears 


298  LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

no  direct  relation  to  the  other  fiction  of  the  time;  and  Bret 
Harte  himself  not  only  was  half  a  poet,  but  he  worked  so 
early  and  remained  so  aloof,  that  there  can  be  little  impro 
priety  in  having  removed  him  from  this  group,  though  his 
great  importance  as  a  forerunner  and  as  a  really  genetic 
influence  must  always  be  kept  in  mind. 

The  position  of  precedence  here  very  properly  falls  to  Wil 
liam  Dean  Howells,  who,  though  born  in  Ohio,  has  been 
closely  associated  through  a  long  literary  career 
wjxHoweiis,  witn  the  writers  anj  magazines  of  tne  Atlantic 

cities,  and  who,  by  energy,  industry,  and  sound 
craftsmanship,  has  won  his  way  to  a  position  of  leadership 
there  among  the  later  novelists  and  miscellaneous  writers 
similar  to  that  occupied  by  Mr.  Aldrich  among  poets  and  Mr. 
Stedman  among  critics.  Mr.  Howells,  like  Bayard  Taylor, 
had  always  literary  proclivities.  His  early  training  was 
received  in  a  country  printing-office,  and  before  he  made,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-two,  his  first  pilgrimage  to  Boston  and 
New  York,  he  had  become  acquainted  with  Spanish,  Italian, 
and  German  literature.  He  was  already  contributing  to 
magazines,  and  he  published  in  1860,  with  John  J.  Piatt, 
Poems  of  Two  Friends.  During  the  Civil  War  he  was  abroad 
as  United  States  consul  at  Venice,  and  the  delightful  Venetian 
Life  and  Italian  Journeys,  which  were  published  as  the 
immediate  result  of  this  formative  period  of  his  literary  life, 
fixed  his  reputation.  He  was  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
from  1871  to  1881,  when  he  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Aldrich, 
and  he  has  been  connected  in  various  capacities  with  The 
Nation,  Harper's  Magazine,  The  Cosmopolitan,  and  other 
journals.  His  literary  product  has  been  large  and  varied. 
There  have  been  several  volumes  of  poems,  not  only  early 
in  his  life,  but  one — Stops  of  Various  Quills — as  late  as  1895. 
There  are  prose  volumes  of  travel,  biography,  and  criticism; 
light  parfor  comedies  and  farces,  such  as  The  Parlor  Car  and 


HO  WELLS  299 

The  Mousetrap;  disguised  studies  in  sociology,  such  as  A 
Traveller  from  Altruria  (1894);  and  volumes  of  reminiscence, 
more  or  less  autobiographical,  including  A  Boy's  Town 
(1890),  My  Literary  Passions  (1895),  and  Literary  Friends 
and  Acquaintance  (1900).  Outweighing  all  these,  however, 
in  bulk  and  importance  are  his  novels,  beginning  with  Their 
Wedding  Journey  in  1871  and  including  among  the  best  A 
Foregone  Conclusion  (1874),  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook  (1879), 
A  Modern  Instance  (1882),  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  (1885), 
The  Minister's  Charge  (1886),  and  A  Hazard  of  New  For 
tunes  (1889). 

Mr.  Howells  has  long  been  conceded  to  be  a  leader,  if  not 
indeed  the  founder,  of  the  later  school  of  American  fiction.  It 
is  the  school  of  realism  already  described,  and  its  great  repre 
sentatives  in  other  countries  have  always  been  admired  and 
defended  by  Mr.  Howells — the  French  Flaubert,  for  instance, 
the  Russian  Turgenieff  and  Tolstoi,  and  the  Norwegian  Ibsen. 
The  realist  (or  "veritist,"  or  "naturalist,"  as  he  variously 
prefers  to  be  called)  seeks  his  material  in  what  he  can  observe 
and  is  opposed  to  altering  it  very  much  by  either  selection  or 
rejection.  His  art,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Howells,  must  be 
"true  to  the  motives,  the  influences,  the  principles  that  shape 
the  life  of  actual  men  and  women."  Sometimes,  particularly 
with  the  French  school,  it  leads  him  to  the  portrayal  of  all 
that  is  coarse,  criminal,  and  revolting  in  life,  so  that  the  word 
realism  has  been  often  improperly  narrowed  to  this.  Mr. 
Howells,  however,  with  most  American  writers,  has  avoided 
the  worst  phases  of  life.  Indeed,  he  would  regard  such  real 
ism  as  a  kind  of  untruth,  scarcely  less  false  in  its  emphasis 
than  the  romanticism  which  confined  itself  to  the  rose-colored 
existence  and  the  impossible  deeds  of  princes,  knights,  and 
ladies.  He  seeks  to  portray  the  average  man  and  woman 
under  average  circumstances, — Silas  Lapham,  an  enriched 
plebeian  struggling  for  place  and  honor,  Lemuel  Barker,  a 


300  LATE  MOVEMENTS  IN  FICTION 

country  youth  pushing  his  way  to  fortune  in  the  city,  Marcia 
Gaylord,  an  irresponsible  young  woman  going  through  the 
disillusioning  experience  of  a  loveless  marriage, — all  with 
painstaking  portrayal  of  the  minutest  incidents  in  the  life  of 
the  characters,  and  an  unshrinking  exposition  of  their  un 
lovely  traits  of  mind  and  heart,  as  well  as  of  their  better 
thoughts  and  aspirations.  It  may,  indeed,  be  doubted 
whether  such  situations  and  such  a  method  can  bring  out 
real  character  and  show  what  humanity  is  capable  of,  whether 
they  can  better  fortify  us  for  enduring  the  trials  of  our  own 
existence,  whether,  in  short,  there  is  any  profit  for  us  in  an 
art  that  reveals  little  but  wThat  we  can  all  see  around  us.  But 
these  are  questions  which  each  reader  will  answer  according 
to  his  temperament.  Some  need  the  incitement  of  a  glori 
fied  vision — of  life  as  it  might  be;  some,  over-imaginative, 
need  the  wholesome  corrective  of  life  as  it  is.  As  for  Mr. 
Howells,  though  his  novels  may  at  times  be  found  tedious  in 
incident  and  unsatisfying  in  conclusion,  all  readers  must 
grant  to  him  a  deep  insight  into  character,  a  power  of  excep 
tionally  accurate  and  vivid  portraiture,  both  of  people  and  of 
scenes,  and  a  never  failing  humor  and  charm  of  style. 

Henry  James,  whose  name  has  long  been  coupled  with  that 
of  Mr.  Howells  as  a  writer  of  the  same  school,  was  born  at 
New  York  and  educated  partly  in  France  and 
?8«!yJames>  Switzerland.  Since  1869  he  has  lived  so  con 
stantly  in  England  that  his  title  to  be  regarded  as 
an  American  author  is  rather  slight.  Besides  various  sketches 
and  essays  in  travel,  biography,  and  criticism,  his  numerous 
novels  include  The  American  (1877),  The  Europeans  (1878), 
Daisy  Miller:  A  Study  (1878;  later  also  Daisy  Miller:  A 
Comedy),  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  (1881),  The  Bostonians 
(1886),  and  The  Princess  Casamassima  (1886).  Mr.  James, 
with  his  knowledge  of  American  character  and  also  of  Euro 
pean  life  and  society,  has  largely  occupied  himself  with  por- 


JAMES;  MARY  E.  WILKINS  301 

traying  Americans  in  a  European  environment,  so  that  the 
name  "international"  is  sometimes  applied  to  his  novels.  But 
Americans,  it  must  be  said,  have  often  resented  his  portrayals 
as  inaccurate  or  at  least  as  unfair  to  the  truest  types  of  Ameri 
can  manhood  and  womanhood.  Naturally,  others  cannot  be 
expected  to  see  Americans  as  they  see  themselves,  and  Mr. 
James  almost  belongs  among  the  "others."  In  his  realistic 
method  he  has  gone  a  step  beyond  Mr.  Howells,  being  utterly 
tireless  in  reporting  trivial  conversations  and  depicting  the 
minutiae  of  actions  and  manners.  This  kind  of  analysis, 
purposely  subordinating  dramatic  effects  and  leaving  the 
characters  to  be  deduced  as  from  a  photograph,  results,  in 
the  eyes  of  Mr.  James's  hostile  critics,  only  in  analysing  the 
heart  out  of  his  characters;  he  seems  too  clever  to  be  strong 
and  human.  His  style,  however,  like  that  of  Mr.  Howells,  is 
polished,  witty,  in  a  way  brilliant.  And  though  there  are 
many  readers  who  cannot  like  his  novels,  there  are  others 
who  find  in  them  the  perfection  of  the  novelist's  art  and  have 
made  of  their  admiration  almost  a  cult. 

Of  the  younger  realists,  who  have  so  increasingly  confined 
their  attention  to  the  provincial,  or  local,  novel,  Mary  E. 
Ma  £  Wilkins  (Mrs.  Freeman)  is  perhaps  the  foremost 
wnkins,  representative.  She  is  of  New  England,  and 
though  that  section  of  the  country  would  seem 
to  hold  small  promise  for  a  writer  of  her  kind,  she  has  found 
there,  in  the  farms  and  villages  that  have  been  least  touched 
by  the  spirit  of  modern  progress,  material  which  to  most 
readers  is  sufficiently  novel  and  which  she  has  succeeded  in 
investing  with  not  a  little  charm.  The  stories  by  which  she 
established  her  reputation  were  collected  under  the  titles  of 
A  Humble  Romance,  and  Other  Stories  (1887)  and  A  New 
England  Nun  (1891).  Those  who  are  well-read  in  fiction  will 
perceive  that  Miss  Wilkins 's  work  does  not  differ  radically 
from  that  of  a  dozen  predecessors; — the  kind,  indeed,  can 


302  LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

be  easily  traced  back  through  writers  like  Margaret  Deland, 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  Ward,  and 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  to  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 
But,  as  intimated  above,  Miss  Wilkins  has  brought  into 
combination  more  of  the  methods  of  the  later  writers.  Work 
ing  best  with  the  short  story,  she  has  not  hesitated  to  apply 
to  it  all  the  arts  of  the  more  elaborate  realists.  She  has  the 
primary  requisites  of  her  school — intimate  knowledge  of  her 
environment,  powers  of  patient  and  acute  observation, 
lively  sympathy,  and  abundant  humor.  She  presents  unmis 
takably  real  people  and  scenes — farmers,  peddlers,  district 
school  teachers,  afternoon  teas,  quilting-bees,  New  England 
door-yards  with  cinnamon  rose-bushes,  cemeteries  with 
evergreen  fences  and  weeping- willows.  But  she  does  not 
content  herself  with  description  and  with  conversation  in 
rustic  dialect.  She  never  forgets  that  it  is  her  business  to  tell 
a  story;  and  just  when  the  reader  begins  to  feel  stifled  by  the 
narrowness  and  dreariness  of  this  homely  life — to  grow  weary 
of  the  eternal  old  ladies  knitting  or  demure  young  women  in 
old-fashioned  muslin  gowns — she  heightens  the  tale  with  a 
touch  of  the  dramatic  or  throws  in  a  sudden  glint  of  romance. 
Human  hearts  are  shown  beating  in  the  humblest  of  bosoms, 
and  heroism  itself  is  allowed  not  to  be  incompatible  with 
life's  daily  round.  This  is  doubtless  the  highest  triumph  of 
realism,  and  there  are  few  of  Miss  Wilkins's  stories  that  do 
not  leave  one  with  a  sense  of  "more  than  meets  the  eye." 
Frank  R.  Stockton,  of  Philadelphia,  won  a  unique  place 
among  the  late  writers  of  fiction  by  combining  the  methods 
of  the  romancer  and  the  novelist  to  humorous  ends.  His 
early  work  was  done  as  a  journalist.  For  a  time 
he  was  assistant  editor  of  St.  Nicholas  and  he 
wrote  some  popular  j  u venile  stories .  With  Rudder 
Grange,  in  1879,  he  attracted  the  attention  of  older  readers  as 
a  humorous  writer  of  unusual  gifts,  and  the  short  story  of 


STOCKTON  303 

The  Lady  or  the  Tiger,  published  in  1884,  fixed  his  repu 
tation.  Stockton's  romancing  is  of  the  wildest  and  most 
whimsical  kind  and  has  in  it  much  of  *the  mock-heroic.  The 
foundation  of  his  humor  is  the  incongruous.  He  delights  in 
getting  his  characters,  in  themselves  essentially  modern  and 
commonplace,  into  the  most  absurdly  impossible  situations, 
treating  them  all  the  time  with  an  assumption  of  the  utmost 
gravity.  This  fantastic  humor  of  situation,  for  which  there 
seems  to  be  no  adequate  description  but  the  word  "Stock- 
tonian,"  may  be  found  in  almost  all  of  his  novels  and  short 
stories — The  Late  Mrs.  Null,  The  Casting  Away  of  Mrs.  Leeks 
and  Mrs.  Aleshine,  The  Hundredth  Man,  Afloat  and  Ashore, 
etc.  His  short  stories  are  usually  his  best. 

As  was  pointed  out  in  the  chapter  on  southern  poetry, 
there  was  in  the  South,  after  the  middle  of  the  century,  a 
marked  intermission  in  the  production  of  prose  fiction. 
Simms's  romances  stopped  with  the  war,  and  there  were  only 
a  few  such  scarcely  significant  writers  as  John  Esten  Cooke, 
Mary  Virginia  Terhune,  and  Augusta  J.  Evans  to  carry  on 
the  work.  Not  until  about  1880  did  the  new  South  give 
evidence  of  a  new  school  of  fiction.  To  be  sure,  a  somewhat 
noteworthy  contribution  to  the  fiction  of  local  scenes,  charac 
ter,  and  dialect,  was  made  in  the  later  sixties  by  Colonel 
R.  M.  Johnston,  with  his  genial  and  humorous  sketches  of 
life  among  the  Georgia  "crackers,"  but  even  these  were  not 
published  in  a  collective  edition  until  the  interest  in  prose 
had  revived.  Now,  however,  that  the  energies  of  southern 
writers  have  been  turned  once  more  to  ward  fiction,  the  product 
is  rapidly  becoming  both  large  in  quantity  and  high  in  quality. 
In  general  character  and  method  it  allies  itself  readily  enough 
with  all  the  later  fiction  of  the  country ;  but  the  picturesque 
nature  of  the  scenes  portrayed,  together,  perhaps,  with  a 
more  tropical  imagination  on  the  part  of  the  writers,  has 
served  to  throw  about  it  much  more  of  romantic  glamour. 


304  LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

Prominent  among  these  writers  are  to  be  named  Joel  Chand 
ler  Harris,  of  Georgia,  who,  in  his  creation  of  Uncle  Remus, 
has  given  the  plantation  negro  a  permanent  place  in  fiction; 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  of  Virginia,  who  has  reflected  through 
the  negro  character,  and  with  a  faithful  record  of  the  negro 
dialect  of  the  peculiar  Virginian  variety,  the  aristocratic 
society  of  the  Old  Dominion;  and  Miss  Mary  N.  Murfree 
("Charles  Egbert  Craddock"),  of  Tennessee,  a  writer  of  the 
descriptive  or  landscape  school,  who  has  wrought  into  the 
tapestry  of  her  work  the  endless  panorama  of  the  hours  and  the 
seasons  in  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains  of  eastern  Tennessee. 
But  the  leading  spirit  of  this  later  activity,  especially  in 
its  more  romantic  aspects,  is  to  be  sought  still  farther  south. 
For  many  years  George  Washington  Cable  has 
G^W.  Cable,  j^j^  tne  pOSftjon  of  one  of  America's  most  dis 
tinctive  novelists.  He  was  born  in  New  Orleans 
in  1844.  After  a  short  service  in  early  manhood  as  a  cavalry 
man  in  the  Confederate  army,  he  entered  upon  a  struggling 
career  in  his  native  city,  at  one  time  as  a  clerk  in  a  cotton 
factor's  office  and  again  as  a  reporter  on  the  New  Orleans 
Picayune.  He  thus  obtained  a  close  knowledge  of  the  life 
and  character  of  the  Louisiana  Creoles,  both  in  the  city  and 
among  the  bayous  of  the  lower  Mississippi,  and  this  know 
ledge  he  made  the  foundation  of  his  earliest  essays  in  litera 
ture.  His  sketches,  which  appeared  first  in  Scribner's  Mag 
azine  and  which  were  collected  in  1879  under  the  title  of  Old 
Creole  Days.,  attracted  much  attention  and  were  rapidly 
followed  by  more  elaborate  romances — The  Grandissimes 
(1880);  Madame  Delphine  (1881);  Dr.  Sevier  (1884);  Bona- 
venture  (1888) ;  etc.  In  later  years  he  removed  to  the  North, 
where  he  became  interested  in  several  philanthropic  projects, 
and  did  not  a  little,  both  through  his  novels  and  through 
readings  and  lectures,  to  bring  the  South  and  the  North  into 
closer  sympathy.  Of  real  service  in  this  direction,  for 


CABLE;   ALLEN  305 

example,  is  his  John  March,  Southerner  (1894),  a  novel  of  the 
reconstruction  period.  But  his  best  work  is  to  be  found  in 
his  early  romantic,  almost  poetic,  stories  of  that  quaint, 
remote  life  of  the  southern  Creoles,  which  seems  so  detached 
from  all  that  we  commonly  think  of  as  American.  He  had 
precisely  the  qualifications  that  were  needed  for  such  work — 
a  strong  imagination,  quick  sensibilities,  an  equal  command 
of  humor  and  of  pathos,  and  a  picturesque  style;  and  he  suc 
ceeded  in  enriching  southern  literature  as  no  prose  writer 
before  him  had  done. 

Another  southern  writer  of  this  semi-romantic  type — an 
other  projector,  that  is  to  say,  of  very  real  characters  against 

a  romantic  background — is  James  Lane  Allen. 
i849-AUen'  Mr.  Allen,  who  came  into  prominence  in  the  last 

decade  of  the  century,  has  made  himself  known  as 
the  novelist  of  Kentucky,  and  in  so  far  he  is  a  writer  of  the 
"local"  school.  As  such,  however,  he  depends  more  on  the 
charms  of  nature  and  landscape  than  on  dialect,  breathing 
the  freshness  of  spring  into  his  A  Kentucky  Cardinal  and 
Aftermath,  or  saturating  his  A  Summer  in  Arcady  with  south 
ern  warmth  and  sunshine.  But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
regard  Mr.  Allen  as  merely  a  local  novelist.  The  characters 
which  he  portrays  and  the  problems  of  life  amidst  which 
they  are  compelled  to  work  out  their  destinies  are  not  to  be 
circumscribed  by  state  boundary  lines.  His  writings  thus 
challenge  comparison  with  the  highest  in  fiction;  and  indeed 
The  Choir  Invisible  (1897),  in  its  slightness  of  plot,  its  search 
ing  analysis,  and  its  intense  realization  of  inner  experiences, 
suggests  Hawthorne.  It  is  when  confronted  by  work  like 
this  that  we  are  led  to  the  judgment  that  the  strength  of 
American  literature  at  the  present  time  lies  in  its  fiction. 

Since  Mark  Twain  and  Bret  Harte  left  the  Middle  and  the 
Far  West,  scarcely  a  novelist  of  first  importance  has  arisen  in 
that  territory.  One,  contemporary  with  these,  Edward 


306  LATE    MOVEMENTS   IN   FICTION 

Eggleston,  of  Indiana,  was  a  popular  historian  of  log  cabin 
life — of  the  raw  civilization  that  was  found  among  the  early 
settlers  of  the  Mississippi  valley;  another,  Constance  Feni- 
more  Woolson,  exploited  the  region  from  the  shores  of  Lake 
Superior  to  the  Gulf;  and  not  a  few  later  writers — Mrs.  Cath- 
erwood,  Miss  Foote,  Miss  French,  Henry  B.  Fuller,  Hamlin 
Garland,  Robert  Herrick,  Frank  Norris,  Jack  London — have 
presented  one  type  or  another  of  its  motley  population,  from 
the  French  explorers  of  the  Old  Northwest  to  the  "cliff- 
dwellers"  of  modern  Chicago,  and  from  the  claim-holders  of 
Dakota  to  the  gamblers  and  "high-binders  "of  San  Francisco's 
Chinatown.  But  while  one  of  these  writers  has  fancy,  and 
another  technique,  and  another  strength,  and  another 
humor,  it  is  too  early  to  say  that  any  of  them  have  brought 
the  right  combination  of  powers  to  their  task,  and  the  scenes 
and  characters  which  they  have  more  or  less  faithfully  por 
trayed  still  await  the  final  delineator. 


CONCLUSION 

Our  review  of  the  later  American  writers  has  kept  pretty 
carefully  within  the  field  of  legitimate  letters.  Did  we  care  to 
extend  the  survey  to  the  borders  of  that  field  where  knowledge 
counts  for  more  than  imagination,  we  should  be  met  at  once 
by  an  army  of  industrious  authors,  including  some,  indeed, 
who  might  well  find  a  place  in  this  record.  Oratory  would 
offer  no  names,  for  the  pulpit,  the  halls  of  legislature,  and  the 
public  platform  alike,  reveal  no  speaker  of  importance  since 
Curtis.  Journalism,  however,  history,  and  the  various  de 
partments  of  science,  are  fields  of  intense  activity.  In  his 
torical  writing  a  prodigious  amount  of  work  has  been  done, 
and  of  such  a  sound  quality  that  it  threatens  to  make  obso 
lete  most  of  the  work  of  the  past.  The  names  are  many — 
in  the  field  of  American  history,  Goldwin  Smith,  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  Henry  Adams,  Von  Hoist,  Fiske,  Eggleston, 
Winsor,  Schouler,  Rhodes,  McMaster,  Woodrow  Wilson; 
in  American  history  and  literature,  Moses  Coit  Tyler,  and 
Barrett  Wendell;  in  ecclesiastical  history,  Henry  C.  Lea; 
in  British  naval  history,  Captain  Mahan.  Of  these  names 
(Goldwin  Smith,  as  an  English  Canadian,  scarcely  comes 
within  our  purview),  perhaps  three  stand  out  conspicuously — 
Henry  Adams,  Hermann  von  Hoist,  and  John  Fiske ;  though 
it  is  probable  that  only  Fiske  touched  on  such  subjects  and 
employed  such  a  method  and  style  as  to  reach  many  readers 
whose  interests  lie  outside  of  special  historical  lines.  The 
methods  of  the  later  historians  have  not  tended  to  make 
general  literature  of  their  work;  and  the  same  thing  is  true 
in  all  branches  of  scholarship.  It  is,  indeed,  difficult  to 
resist  including  here  the  names  of  many  specialists, — such 
as  Francis  A.  Walker  and  Richard  T.  Ely  in  social  and 


307 


308  CONCLUSION 

political  science,  E.  L.  Godkin  in  government,  William 
James  and  Josiah  Royce  in  philosophy,  Simon  Newcomb  and 
N.  S.  Shaler  in  science,  Francis  J.  Child  and  H.  H.  Furness 
in  English  language  and  literature,  Drs.  Eliot,  Thwing,  and 
Butler  in  education.  But  our  definition  of  literature,  as  some 
thing  that,  even  while  it  instructs,  entertains  by  its  appeal  to 
the  imagination,  must  often  exclude  greater  names  in  favor  of 
lesser. 

The  conditions  now  obtaining  in  pure  literature  have 
already  been  somewhat  specifically  set  forth.  Much  poetry 
is  being  written,  and  some  of  it  is  read.  There  are  hundreds 
of  versifiers  who  have  a  mastery  of  technique  and  enough  of 
the  poetic  spirit  to  keep  them  safely  above  the  prose  level, 
but  who  still  fall  short  of  real  genius.  Perhaps  the  highest 
promise  of  American  poetry  just  now  is  to  be  found  in  Canada, 
where  men  like  Charles  G.  D.  Roberts,  William  Wilfred 
Campbell,  and  Bliss  Carman  (some  of  them  now  drifted 
across  the  border)  are  putting  the  wild  beauty  and  romantic 
color  of  their  native  north  into  such  intensely  lyrical  verse 
that  American  literature  will  speedily  have  to  reckon  with 
them.  But  in  general  our  contemporary  poetry  commands 
nothing  more  than  a  passing  admiration;  it  plays  no  such 
part  in  our  spiritual  life  as  the  earlier  poetry  played  and  still 
plays. 

Literary  drama  has  much  less  to  its  credit.  Here 
and  there  a  man  like  Bronson  How^ard,  the  author  of  Sara 
toga  and  Shenandoah,  has  cultivated  play-writing  with  prac 
tical  success,  and  the  lyrical  dramas  of  Moody  have  been 
mentioned  as  possessing  real  distinction.  There  is  mani 
festly,  however,  a  wide  and  growing  interest  in  the  drama, 
and  we  may  confidently  look  for  increasingly  better  work. 

What  the  novel  has  developed  into,  we  have  seen.  The 
interest  in  the  local  or  special  novel  is  by  no  means  abating. 
New  fields  are  being  ransacked — the  Bowery,  the  tenement 


CONCLUSION  309 

house,  the  club,  the  college,  the  corporation.  The  gold- 
hunters  of  the  Klondike  have  brought  back  thrilling  stories, 
and  Cuba  and  the  Philippines  have  made  their  contribution. 
There  has  also  been  a  marked  revival  of  historical  fiction. 
Tales  of  the  colonial  and  revolutionary  days  have  multiplied, 
and  some  writers  are  even  seeking  far-away  foreign  and 
mediaeval  themes,  often  with  little  historical  or  antiquarian 
knowledge  upon  which  to  base  their  fancies.  This  is  perhaps  a 
natural  outcome  of  the  revived  taste,  largely  fostered  by  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  for  the  story  of  incident  and  adventure. 

Lastly,  there  is  the  essay — critical,  social,  religious,  dis 
cursive, — perhaps  the  highest  literary  outcome  of  journalism. 
The  frequency  with  which  volumes  of  collected  essays  make 
their  appearance  would  seem  to  indicate  a  peculiarly  flourish 
ing  condition  of  the  type.  Certainly  the  type  is  popular  and 
many  essayists  may  be  readily  named — Mr.  Woodberry, 
Mr.  Mabie,  Dr.  Van  Dyke,  Mr.  Paul  Elmer  More,  Professor 
Irving  Babbitt,  Dr.  Samuel  M.  Crothers, — several  of  whom 
have  already  been  discussed.  But  distinctive  work  in  this 
kind  is  rare;  scarcely  one  essayist  in  a  century  attains  great 
ness,  and  scarcely  two  in  a  generation  are  read  into  the  next. 
The  work  of  a  hundred  present  day  essayists  is  likely  to  be 
summed  up  and  surpassed  by  some  great  social  philosopher 
of  the  future.  Meanwhile,  one  aspect  of  the  contemporan 
eous  essay  deserves  attention.  Since  the  day  of  Emerson 
and  Thoreau  the  charm  of  out-door  life — the  lure  of  nature, 
tame  or  wild — has  never  quite  lost  its  hold  upon  us.  Today 
we  have,  for  strong  witness  to  this  fact,  the  writings  of  John 
Burroughs,  John  Muir,  Ernest  E.  Thompson  Seton,  Stewart 
Edward  White,  and  a  large  body  of  less  known  votaries.  And 
we  are  bound  to  feel  that  this  wide  and  healthy  outlook  of  our 
present  literature  upon  nature  and  humanity  alike,  is  in  reas 
suring  contrast  to  the  narrow,  sombre,  and  introspective 
character  of  so  much  of  the  literature  of  two  hundred  years  ago. 


APPENDIX 


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A  CLASSIFIED  LIST  OF  LATE  AND  CONTEMPORARY 
WRITERS* 

POETS 

THE    EAST 
See  text  for  STODDARD,  STEDMAN,  and  ALDRICH. 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER,  1844-1909.  Journalist  and  reformer. 
Associate  editor  and  later  editor-in-chief  of  Scribner's  Monthly  (now 
The  Century).  "The  New  Day,"  1875;"  "Lyrics,  and  Other  Poems," 
1885;  "Two  Worlds,"  1891;  "The  Great  Remembrance,"  1893;  etc. 

JOHN  BOYLE  O'REILLY,  b.  Ireland,  1844;  d.  Hull,  Mass.,  1890. 
An  Irish  revolutionist,  transported  to  Australia,  whence  he  escaped 
to  the  United  States,  1869.  Edited  the  Boston  Pilot.  Published 
"Songs  of  the  Southern  Seas,"  1873,  and  other  poems  and  sketches. 

LLOYD  MIFFLIN,  b.  Columbia,  Pa.,  1846.  Painter  and  poet.  A 
studious  cultivator  of  the  sonnet.  "The  Hills,"  1895;  "At  the  Gates 
of  Song,"  1897;  "The  Fields  of  Dawn,"  1900;  "Collected  Sonnets," 
1905;  etc. 

GEORGE  EDWARD  WTOODBERRY,  b.  Beverly,  Mass.,  1855.  "The 
North  Shore  Watch  (a  threnody,  1883),  and  Other  Poems,"  1890; 
"Wild  Eden,"  1899.  Essays:  "Heart  of  Man,"  1899;  "Makers  of 
Literature,"  1900;  "The  Appreciation  of  Literature,"  1907. 

HENRY  CUYLER  BUNNER,  1855-1896.  Editor  of  Puck.  Author  of 
"Airs  from  Arcady  and  Elsewhere,'*  1884;  "Rowen,"  1892;  also  several 
volumes  of  fiction:  "The  Story  of  a  New  York  House,"  1887;  "Zadoc 
Pine  and  Other  Stories,"  1891. 

CLINTON  SCOLLARD,  b.  Clinton,  N.  Y.,  1860.  Professor  of  English 
Literature  at  Hamilton  College.  "With  Reed  and  Lyre,"  1886; 
"The  Hills  of  Song,"  1895;  "Odes  and  Elegies,"  1905;  etc. 

GEORGE  SANTAYANA,  b.  Madrid,  Spain,  1863.     Professor  of  Philoso- 

*  The  principle  of  classification  adopted  here  is  for  the  most  part  apparent.  Poets  and 
novelists  are  subdivided  geographically,  the  miscellaneous  writers  are  not.  Further,  the  men 
are  separated  from  the  women.  Lastly,  in  each  small  group  the  order  is  chronological,  except 
that  in  the  case  of  the  novelists,  because  of  the  rapid  changes  in  the  character  of  fiction,  the 
writers  born  before  1860,  both  men  and  women,  are  separated  from  those  born  since.  A  few 
slight  departures  from  exact  chronology,  made  to  secure  better  classification,  may  be  noted, 
especially  among  the  miscellaneous  writers. 

313 


314  APPENDIX 

phy  at  Harvard.  "Sonnets  and  Other  Poems,"  1894;  "Lucifer,  a 
Theological  Tragedy,"  1899;  "Interpretations  of  Poetry  and  Religion" 
(essays),  1899;  "The  Life  of  Reason,"  1905. 

RICHARD  HOVEY,  b.  Normal,  111.,  1864;  d.  N.  Y.,  1900.  Graduate 
of  Dartmouth.  Journalist,  actor,  dramatist,  lecturer  on  English  at 
New  York,  poet.  "Seaward"  (elegy  upon  the  death  of  Thomas 
William  Parsons),  1893;  "Songs  from  Vagabondia"  (with  Bliss  Carman), 
1893;  "Launcelot  and  Guenevere,"  a  poem  in  dramas,  1891-98;  "Along 
the  Trail,"  1898;  "Taliesin:  a  Masque,"  1899. 

LOUISE  CHANDLER  MOULTON,  1835-1908.  Author  of  various 
volumes  of  poems,  stories,  and  essays,  from  "This,  That,  and  the  Other," 
1854,  to  "At  the  Wind's  Will,"  1900. 

CELIA  THAXTER,  1836-1894.  Artist-author  of  poems  and  sketches 
of  the  north-east  coast  and  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  where  her  father  was  a 
lighthouse  keeper.  "Among  the  Isles  of  Shoals"  (papers),  1873; 
"Poems,"  1874;  " Drift- Weed,"  1878;  "Poems  for  Children,"  1883. 

EMMA  LAZARUS,  1849-1887.  A  Jewess  of  New  York,  who  wrote  in 
protest  against  the  persecutions  of  her  race.  Author  of  "The  Spa- 
gnoletto,"  a  tragedy,  1876,  and  various  poems  and  translations. 

EDITH  M.  THOMAS,  b.  O.,  1854.  A  writer  of  New  York  City. 
"Lyrics  and  Sonnets,"  1887;  "The  Inverted  Torch,"  1890;  and  other 
volumes  of  verse  and  prose. 

LOUISE  IMOGEN  GUINEY,  b.  Boston,  1861.  "Songs  at  the  Start," 
1884,  "The  White  Sail,"  1887,  and  other  poems  and  essays. 

THE    SOUTH 

See  text  for  HAYNE,  TIMROD,  and  LANIER. 

ABRAM  JOSEPH  RYAN,  "Father  Ryan,"  1839-1886.  A  Catholic 
priest,  chaplain  in  Confederate  army,  and  editor  of  religious  periodicals. 
"The  Conquered  Banner,  and  Other  Poems,"  1880. 

JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB,  1845-1909.  A  Catholic  priest,  and  Pro 
fessor  of  English  Literature  at  St.  Charles  College,  Md.  Served  in 
Civil  War.  "Poems,"  1894;  "Lyrics,"  1897;  "Child  Verse,"  1900. 

IRWIN  RUSSELL,  1853-1879.  Poems  in  negro  dialect.  ("Christ 
mas  Night  in  the  Quarters,"  etc.,  collected  1888.) 

SAMUEL  MINTURN  PECK,  b.  1854.  " Cap  and  Bells,"  1886;  "Rhymes 
and  Roses,"  1895;  "Alabama  Sketches"  (prose),  1902. 


POETS  315 

FRANK  LEBBY  STANTON,  b.  Charleston,  S.  C.,  1857.  On  the  staff  of 
the  Atlanta  Constitution.  Author  of  popular  verse,  often  in  dialect. 
"Songs  of  the  Soil,"  1894;  "Songs  from  Dixie  Land,"  1900,  etc. 

MADISON  CAWEIN,  b.  Ky.,  1865.  "The  Blooms  of  the  Berry," 
1887;  "Imitations  of  the  Beautiful,"  1894,  etc.,  collected  works,  1907. 

THE   WEST 

See  text  for  HARTE,  MILLER,  SILL,  FIELD,  RILEY,  and  MOODY. 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  TAYLOR,  1819-1887.  War  Correspondent  for 
Chicago  Journal;  writer  of  poems  and  travel  sketches.  "Pictures  of 
Life  in  Camp  and  Field."  1871;  "Songs  of  Yesterday,"  (including 
"Isle  of  the  Long  Ago"),  1877;  etc. 

RICHARD  REALF,  b.  Sussex,  England,  1834;  d.  Oakland,  Cal.,  1878. 
Steward  of  Lady  Byron;  emigrant  to  Kansas,  1854;  follower  of  John 
Brown;  soldier  in  Union  army.  Scattering  poems,  "The  Children," 
"Indirection,"  etc.,  were  collected  posthumously,  1899. 

JOHN  JAMES  PIATT,  b.  Ind.,  1835.  Served  in  several  official  capac 
ities  at  Washington,  and  as  U.  S.  consul  at  Cork,  Ireland.  Published 
at  Columbus,  Ohio,  with  W.  D.  Howells,  "Poems  of  Two  Friends," 
1860;  also  several  volumes  with  his  wife,  and  a  number  independently — 
"Western  Windows,  and  Other  Poems,"  1869;  "Idyls  and  Lyrics  of 
the  Ohio  Valley,"  1884;  etc.  "The  Mower  in  Ohio"  is  a  touching  idyl 
worthy  of  Whittier. 

JOHN  HAY,  1838-1905.  Early  years  spent  in  Illinois.  A  private 
secretary  of  Lincoln;  major  and  brevet  colonel  in  the  Civil  War;  editor 
and  diplomat;  Ambassador  to  Great  Britain,  1897;  Secretary  of  State, 
1898.  "Pike  County  Ballads,"  ("Little  Breeches,"  "Jim  Bludso,"  etc.), 
1871  ;"Poems,"1890;"LifeofAbrahamLincoln"(withJ.G.Nicolay), 1887. 

WILL  CARLETON,  1845-1912.  Journalist  and  lecturer.  His  poems 
are  largely  in  dialect.  "Poems,"  1871;  "Farm  Ballads,"  1873;  "Farm 
Legends,"  1875;  "City  Ballads,"  1885;  etc. 

CHARLES  WARREN  STODDARD,  1843-1909.  Resident  for  a  time  in 
the  Hawaiian  Islands.  Lecturer  on  English  Literature  at  Notre 
Dame  College,  Ind.,  and  at  the  Catholic  University,  Washington, 
D.  C.  "Poems,"  1867;  "South  Sea  Idyls"  (romantic  prose),  1873. 

JOHN  VANCE  CHENEY,  b.  Groveland,  N.  Y.,  1848.  Librarian  at 
San  Francisco  and  Chicago.  "Thistle-Drift,  1887;  "Wood-Blooms," 
1888;  "Out  of  the  Silence,"  1897;  etc. 


316  APPENDIX 

EDWIN  MARKHAM,  b.  Oregon  City,  Ore.,  1852.  Teacher  in  the  Cal 
ifornia  schools;  resident  of  Brooklyn  since  1899.  "The  Man  with 
the  Hoe  (1899)  and  Other  Poems,"  1900;  "Lincoln,  and  Other  Poems," 
1900. 

PAUL  LAURENCE  DUNBAR,  1872-1906.  Of  African  race.  Journalist 
and  Librarian.  "Lyrics  of  Lowly  Life,"  1896;  "Lyrics  of  the  Hearth- 
side,"  1899;  "Folk  from  Dixie"  (prose),  1897. 

SARAH  MORGAN  PIATT  (Sallie  Bryan),  b.  Lexington,  Ky.,  1836. 
Wife  of  J.  J.  Piatt.  "A  Voyage  to  the  Fortunate  Isles,"  1874;  "An 
Irish  Garland,"  1884;  "Child- World  Ballads,"  1887;  etc. 

INA  DONNA  COOLBRITH,  b.  Illinois.  Resident  of  Los  Angeles  and 
of  San  Francisco,  and  Librarian  at  Oakland,  Cal.  "A  Perfect  Day, 
and  Other  Poems,"  1881;  "Songs  of  the  Golden  Gate,"  1895. 

ELLA  WHEELER  WILCOX,  b.  Wisconsin.  "Drops  of  Water,"  1872; 
"Poems  of  Passion,"  1883;  "Poems  of  Pleasure,"  1888;  etc. 

CANADA 

CHARLES  G.  D.  ROBERTS,  b.  New  Brunswick,  1860.  Journalist  at 
Toronto  and  New  York;  Professor  of  Literature  at  King's  College, 
Windsor,  N.  S.  "Orion  and  Other  Poems,"  1880;  "In  Divers  Tones," 
1887;  "The  Heart  of  the  Ancient  Wood"  (a  novel),  1900. 

ARCHIBALD  LAMPMAN,  1861-1899.  Educated  at  Toronto;  held  a 
position  in  the  Civil  Service  at  Ottawa.  "Among  the  Millet  and 
Other  Poems,"  1888. 

BLISS  CARMAN,  b.  New  Brunswick,  1861.  Journalist,  long  resident 
of  New  York.  "Low  Tide  on  Grand  Pre,"  1893;  "Songs  from  Vaga- 
bondia"  (with  Richard  Hovey),  1894,  1896;  "Pipes  of  Pan,"  1902-1905. 

WILLIAM  WILFRED  CAMPBELL,  b.  Western  Ontario,  1861.  In  the 
government  service  at  Ottawa.  "Lake  Lyrics,"  1899;  "Mordred,  a 
Tragedy"  and  "Hildebrand"  (dramas  in  blank  verse),  1895;  "Beyond 
the  Hills  of  Dream,"  1899. 

NOVELISTS 

THE    EAST 

See  text  for  HOWELLS,  JAMES,  ALDRICH,  and  Miss  WILKINS. 

THEODORE  WINTHROP,  b.  New  Haven,  Conn.,  1828;  killed  at  Big 
Bethel,  Va.,  1861.  Traveller,  and  author  of  analytical  tales.  "Cecil 
Dreeme,"  1861;  "John  Brent,"  "Edwin  Brothertoft,"  "The  Canoe 
and  the  Saddle,"  "Life  in  the  Open  Air,"  1862. 


POETS  317 

FITZ-JAMES  O'BRIEN,  b.  Ireland,  1828;  went  to  New  York,  1852;  d. 
Md.,  1862,  from  wounds  received  in  the  Civil  War.  Author  of  "The 
Diamond  Lens"  (in  Atlantic  Monthly,  1858)  and  other  tales  and  poems. 

SILAS  WEIR  MITCHELL,  b.  Phila.,  1829.  Physiologist  and  physician. 
"Hugh  Wynne,  Free  Quaker,"  1897;  "The  Adventures  of  Francois," 
1898;  "Dr.  North  and  His  Friends,"  1900;  also  poems  and  essays. 

JULIAN  HAWTHORNE,  b.  Boston,  1846.  Son  of  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne.  Journalist  and  foreign  corresponden  .  Author  of  romantic 
tales.  "Bressant,"  1873;  "Archibald  Malm,  son,"  1879;  "Sinfire," 
1887;  also  long  novels:  "Garth,"  1877;  "Sebastian  Strome,"  1880;  etc. 

ARTHUR  SHERBURNE  HARDY,  b.  Boston,  1847.  Graduate  of  West 
Point;  Professor  of  Mathematics  at  Dartmouth  College;  in  the  U.  S. 
diplomatic  service.  "But  Yet  a  Woman,"  1883;  "The  \Vind  of 
Destiny,"  1886;  "Passe  Rose,"  1889. 

HJALMAR  HJORTH  BOYESEN,  b.  Norway,  1848;  d.  New  York,  1895. 
Editor,  and  Professor  of  Germanic  Languages  at  Cornell  and  Columbia. 
"Gunnar,  a  Norse  Romance,"  1874;  "Ilka  on  the  Hill-Top,  and  Other 
Stories,"  1881;  poems,  essays,  stories  for  boys,  etc. 

THOMAS  A.  JANVIER,  b.  Philadelphia,  1849.  Editor;  traveller 
through  Mexico  and  the  south-west;  later,  resident  in  France  and 
England.  "Colour  Studies,"  "Stories  of  Old  New  Spain,"  etc.  "The 
Aztec  Treasure  House"  and  "In  the  Sargasso  Sea"  (1898)  are  stories  of 
adventure  for  boys. 

ROBERT  GRANT,  Judge,  b.  Boston,  1852.  "An  Average  Man," 
1884;  "Unleavened  Bread,"  1900;  "The  Chippendales,"  1909.  Also 
essays:  "The  Reflections  of  a  Married  Man,"  1892;  etc. 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS,  b.  New  Orleans,  1852.  Professor  of  Literature 
at  Columbia.  "His  Father's  Son,"  1895;  "A  Confident  To-morrow," 
1899;  and  many  sketches  of  New  York  life,  essays  in  dramatic  and 
literary  criticism,  etc. 

FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD,  b.  Italy,  1854,  d.  1909.  Traveller,  and 
author  of  nearly  two  score  novels.  "Mr.  Isaacs,"  1882;  "A  Roman 
Singer,"  1884;  "Saracinesca,"  1887;  etc.  Also  historical  works:  "Ave 
Roma  Immortalis,"  1898;  "The  Rulers  of  the  South,"  1900. 

HAROLD  FREDERIC,,  1856-1898.  Journalist  of  New  York  State, 
and  correspondent  abroad.  Novels  chiefly  of  American  rural  life. 
"Seth's  Brother's  Wife,"  1887;  "In  the  Valley,"  1889;  "The  Lawton 
Girl,"  1890;  "The  Copperhead,"  1894;  etc. 


318  APPENDIX 

RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS,  b.  Philadelphia,  1864.  Journalist  and 
foreign  correspondent.  Writer  of  short  stories.  "Gallegher  and 
Other  Stories,"  1891;  "Van  Bibber  and  Others,"  1892;  "The  Princess 
Aline,"  1895;  "Soldiers  of  Fortune,"  1897:  "With  Both  Armies  in  South 
Africa,"  1900;  etc. 

PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD,  1865-1902.  Traveller,  and  writer  in 
the  field  of  history  and  historical  fiction.  "The  Honorable  Peter 
Stirling,"  1894;  "The  P*ory  of  an  Untold  Love,"  1897;  "Janice  Mere 
dith,"  1899. 

ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS,  b.  Brooklyn,  1865.  "The  King  in  Yellow," 
1895;  "The  Maid-at-Arms,"  1902;  etc. 

ADELINE  D.  T.  WHITNEY,  1824-1906.  Author  of  novels  and 
children's  stories.  "Faith  Gartney's  Girlhood,"  1863;  "We  Girls," 
1870;  etc. 

ROSE  TERRY  COOKE,  1827-1892.  Novels  of  New  England  life,  and 
poems.  "Somebody's  Neighbors,"  1881;  "Steadfast,"  1889;  etc. 

JANE  G.  AUSTIN,  1831-1894;  of  Massachusetts.  Stories  of  early 
colonial  days.  "Outpost,"  1866;  "Cipher,"  1869;  "Standish  of 
Standish;"  "Betty  Alden;"  "A  Nameless  Nobleman,"  1881;  etc. 

LOUISA  MAY  ALCOTT,  1832-1888.  Daughter  of  Amos  Bronson 
Alcott.  Writer  of  stories  for  children.  "Little  Women,"  1868,  69; 
"An  Old-Fashioned  Girl,"  1870;  "Little  Men,"  1871;  "Eight  Cousins," 
1875;  "Jo's  Boys,"  1886;  etc. 

HARRIET  PRESCOTT  SPOFFORD,  b.  Me.,  1835.  Romantic  tales  and 
poems.  "Sir  Rohan's  Ghost,"  1859;  "The  Amber  Gods,  and  Other 
Stories,"  1863;  "Azarian,"  1864;  "New  England  Legends,"  1871. 

ELIZABETH  STUART  PHELPS  WARD,  1844-1911.  "The  Gates  Ajar," 
1868;  "Beyond  the  Gates,"  1883;  "The  Madonna  of  the  Tubs,"  1886; 
"A  Singular  Life,"  1895;  "Within  the  Gates,"  1900;  and  many  other 
moral  and  religious  novels. 

SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT,  1849-1909.  Stories  of  the  northeast  coast. 
"Deephaven,"  1877;  "A  Country  Doctor,"  1884;  "A  Marsh  Island," 
1885;  "The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,"  1896;  etc. 

MARGARET  DELANO,  b.  Pa.,  1857.  Resident  of  Boston.  "John 
Ward,  Preacher,"  1888;  "Old  Chester  Tales,"  1898;  "Dr.  Lavendar's 
People,"  1904;  "The  Awakening  of  Helen  Richie,"  1906. 


NOVELISTS  319 

ALICE  BROWN,  b.  N.  H.,  1857.  Short  Stories:  "Meadow-Grass," 
1895;  "Tiverton  Tales,"  1899;  "The  Country  Road,"  1906;  "Country 
Neighbors,"  1910;  etc. 

KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  (Mrs.  Riggs),  b.  Philadelphia,  1859.  Inter 
ested  in  Kindergarten  work.  "The  Bird's  Christmas  Carol,"  1888; 
"Timothy's  Quest,"  1890;  "Penelope's  English  Experiences,"  1893; 
"Penelope's  Progress,"  1897;  etc. 

EDITH  WHARTON,  b.  New  York.  Several  volumes  of  short  stories. 
"The  Greater  Inclination,"  1899;  "The  Touchstone,"  1900;  etc. 
Novels:  "The  House  of  Mirth,"  1905;  "Ethan  Frome,"  1911. 

THE   SOUTH 

See  text  for  CABLE  and  ALLEN. 

RICHARD  MALCOLM  JOHNSTON,  1822-1898.  Lawyer;  teacher  in 
Georgia  and  Maryland.  "Dukesborough  Tales"  (originally  contributed 
to  the  Southern  Magazine),  1883;  "Old  Mark  Langston,"  1884;  "Two 
Gray  Tourists,"  1885;  etc. 

JOHN  ESTEN  COOKE,  1830-1886;  of  Virginia.  Lawyer,  soldier,  poet, 
and  romance  writer.  "The  Virginia  Comedians,"  1854;  "Fairfax," 
1868;  etc. 

ALBION  W.  TOURGEE,  1838-1905.  Officer  in  the  Union  army,  jurist, 
editor,  lecturer,  U.  S.  consul.  Lived  in  North  Carolina,  1865-1881. 
Legal  works  and  semi-political  novels  relating  to  the  South.  "Figs 
and  Thistles,"  1879;  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  1879;  "Bricks  Without  Straw,' 
1880;  "An  Appeal  to  Caesar,"  1884. 

FRANCIS  HOPKINSON  SMITH,  b.  Baltimore,  1838.  Mechanical  en 
gineer;  landscape  painter;  illustrator.  Stories,  essays,  and  character 
sketches.  "Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersville,"  1891;  "A  Gentleman 
Vagabond  and  Others,"  1895;  "Tom  Grogan,"  1896;  "Caleb  West, 
Master  Diver,"  1898. 

JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS,  1848-1908.  Editor  of  Atlanta  Constitution, 
"Uncle  Remus,  His  Songs  and  Sayings,"  1880;  "Daddy  Jake  ths 
Runaway";  "Mr.  Rabbit  at  Home";  "Tales  of  the  Home  Folks";  etcc 

THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE,  b.  Va.,  1853.  Lawyer  and  Lecturer.  "In 
Ole  Virginia"  (short  stories — "Marse  Chan,"  "Meh  Lady,"  etc.';, 
1887;  "Red  Rock"  (a  novel  of  the  reconstruction  period),  1899;  et  fc 


320  APPENDIX 

FRANCES  HODGSON  BURNETT,  b.  England,  1849.  Removed  to  Ten 
nessee,  1865;  now  resident  of  Washington,  D.  C.  "That  Lass  o' 
Lowrie's"  (Lancashire),  1876;  "Louisiana,"  1880;  "Through  One 
Administration,"  1882;  "Little  Lord  Fauntleroy,"  1886. 

MARY  NOAILLES  MURFREE  ("Charles  Egbert  Craddock"),  b.  Tenn., 
1850.  "In  the  Tennessee  Mountains"  (eight  sketches),  1884;  "The 
Prophet  of  the  Great  .Smoky  Mountains,"  1885;  "The  Despot  of 
Broomsedge  Cove,"  1888;  etc. 

GRACE  KING,  b.  La.,  1852.  Stories  of  Creole  life.  "Monsieur 
Motte,"  1888;  "Tales  of  Time  and  Place,"  1892;  "Balcony  Stories," 
1893;  etc. 

RUTH  McENERY  STUART,  b.  La.,  1856.  Writer  of  short  stories.  "A 
Golden  Wedding,"  1893;  "Carlotta's  Intended,"  1894;  "The  Story  of 
Babette,  a  Little  Creole  Girl,"  1894;  "Sonny,"  (the  story  of  an  Arkansas 
boy),  1896;  etc. 

AMELIE  RIVES  (Princess  Troubetskoy),  b.  Richmond,  Va.,  1863. 
"A  Brother  to  Dragons,  and  Other  Old-Time  Tales,"  1888;  "The 
Quick  or  the  Dead,"  1888;  "Virginia  of  Virginia";  "Barbara  Der- 
ing";  etc. 

MARY  JOHNSTON,  b  Va.,  1870.  Tales  of  Colonial  Virginia.  "Pris 
oners  of  Hope,"  1898;  "To  Have  and  to  Hold,"  1899;  "Audrey,"  1901; 
"The  Long  Roll,"  1911. 

SYDNEY  PORTER,  ("O.  Henry"),  1867-1910.  Short  Stories:  "Cab 
bages  and  Kings,"  1905;  "The  Four  Million,"  1906;  "Options,"  1909; 
etc. 

JOHN  Fox,  Jr.,  b.  Ky.  "The  Little  Shepherd  of  Kingdom  Come," 
1903;  "Trail  of  the  Lonesome  Pine,"  1908;  etc. 

WINSTON  CHURCHILL,  b.  St.  Louis,  1871.  Graduate  of  U.  S.  Naval 
Academy  at  Annapolis,  Md.  "The  Celebrity,"  a  society  sketch, 
1898;  "Richard  Carvel,"  a  story  of  Maryland  before  the  Revolution, 
1899;  "The  Crisis,"  1901;  "The  Crossing,"  1904;  "Coniston,"  1906; 
"Mr.  Crewe's  Career,"  1908. 

THE   WEST 

See  text  for  HARTE  and  MRS.  JACKSON. 

LEWIS  WALLACE,  1827-1905.  Lawyer;  lieutenant  in  Mexican 
War;  major-general  in  Civil  WTar;  governor  of  New  Mexico;  U.  S. 
minister  to  Turkey.  "The  Fair  God,"  an  Aztec  story,  1873;  "Ben 
Hur,  a  Tale  of  the  Christ,"  1880;  "The  Prince  of  India,"  1893. 


NOVELISTS  321 

EDWARD  EGGLESTON,  1837-1902.  Methodist  minister  ("circuit- 
rider")  in  Indiana  and  Minnesota;  editor  at  Chicago  and  New  York; 
pastor  at  Brooklyn.  "The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  1871;  "The  Cir 
cuit  Rider,"  1874;  "The  Faith  Doctor,"  1891;  etc.  Also  several 
school  histories. 

AMBROSE  BIERCE,  b.  Ohio,  1842.  Brevetted  major  in  the  Civil  War. 
Journalist,  resident  in  California.  "Tales  of  Soldiers  and  Civilians" 
(later  title,  "In  the  Midst  of  Life"),  1892;  "Black  Beetles  in  Amber" 
(satires  in  verse),  1892;  "Shapes  of  Clay,"  1903. 

CAPTAIN  CHARLES  KING,  b.  Albany,  N.  Y.,  1844.  Served  with  the 
army  in  the  west;  brigadier-general  in  the  war  against  Spain;  served 
in  the  Philippines.  Numerous  military  novels.  "The  Deserter," 
1887;  "Dunraven  Ranch,"  1888;  "The  Colonel's  Daughter,"  etc. 

WILLIAM  ALLEN  WTHITE,  b.  Kans.,  1868.  "The  Count  of  Boyville," 
1899;  "In  Our  Town,"  1906;  etc. 

BOOTH  TARKINGTON,  b.  Indianapolis,  1869.  "The  Gentleman  from 
Indiana,"  1899;  "Monsieur  Beaucaire,"  1900;  etc. 

CONSTANCE  FENIMORE  WOOLSON,  1810-1894.  Spent  the  summers 
of  her  girlhood  on  the  island  of  Mackinac  and  the  shores  of  Lake 
Superior.  "Castle  Nowhere"  (sketches  of  the  Lake  region),  1875; 
"Rodman  the  Keeper"  (southern),  1880;  "Anne,"  1882;  "East 
Angels,"  1886;  "Jupiter  Lights,"  1889. 

MARY  HARTWELL  CATHERWOOD,  1847-1902.  Resident  of  Illinois. 
Historical  romances  of  the  old  North- West.  "  Craque-o'-Doom," 
1881;  "The  Romance  of  Dollard,"  1889;  "Old  Kaskaskia,"  1893; 
"The  White  Islander,"  1893;  etc. 

MARY  HALLOCK  FOOTE,  b.  N.  Y.,  1847.  Artist.  Resident  of  Colo 
rado,  California,  and  Idaho.  "The  Led  Horse  Claim,"  1883;  "John 
Bodewin's  Testimony,"  1886;  "The  Chosen  Valley,"  1892;  "In  Exile, 
and  Other  Stories,"  1894;  "Coeur  d'  Alene,"  1894. 

ALICE  FRENCH  ("Octave  Thanet"),  b.  Mass.,  1850.  Resident  of 
Arkansas  and  Iowa.  Trans-Mississippi  stories.  "Knitters  in  the 
Sun,"  1887;  "Expiation,"  1890;  "Stories  of  a  Western  Town,"  1893. 

HENRY  BLAKE  FULLER,  b.  Chicago,  1857.  Novels,  chiefly  of  Chi 
cago  life.  "The  Chevalier  of  Pensieri-Vani,"  1890;  "The  Cliff-Dwel 
lers,"  1893;  "With  the  Procession,"  1895. 


322  APPENDIX 

HAMLIN  GARLAND,  b.  Wisconsin,  1860.  Educated  in  Iowa;  taught 
in  Illinois;  farmed  in  Dakota;  lectured  in  the  East.  "Main-Travelled 
Roads"  (short  stories),  1891;  "Rose  of  Dutcher's  Cooley,"  1895; 
"The  Eagle's  Heart,"  1900.  Also  "Prairie  Songs,"  1893,  and  "The 
Trail  of  the  Gold-Seekers"  (prose  and  verse),  1899. 

ROBERT  HERRICK,  b.  Mass.,  1868.  Professor  in  the  University 
of  Chicago;  writer  of  short  stories  and  novels.  "Love's  Dilemma," 
1898;  "The  Web  of  Life,"  1900;  "The  Real  World,"  1901;  "The  Com 
mon  Lot,"  1904;  "Together,"  1908. 

FRANK  NORRIS,  1870-1902.  California  Stories:  "McTeague,"  1899; 
"The  Octopus,"  1901;  "The  Pit,"  1902. 

JACK  LONDON,  b.  San  Francisco,  1876.  "The  Son  of  the  Wolf: 
Tales  of  the  Far  North,"  1900;  "The  Call  of  the  Wild,"  1903;  "The 
Sea  Wolf,"  1904;  etc. 

CANADA 

SIR  GILBERT  PARKER,  b.  Canada,  1860.  Lecturer  in  English  Litera 
ture  at  Toronto;  journalist  in  the  South  Seas;  later  resident  in  England; 
contributor  to  American  magazines.  "Pierre  and  His  People,"  1892; 
"When  Valmond  Came  to  Pontiac,"  1895;  "The  Seats  of  the  Mighty," 
1896;  "The  Battle  of  the  Strong,"  1898;  "The  Right  of  WTay,"  1901; 
"The  Weavers,"  1907. 

MISCELLANEOUS  WRITERS 

HISTORIANS 

See  text  for  PARKMAN  and  predecessors. 

HENRY  CHARLES  LEA,  1825-1909.  Publisher.  "Superstition  and 
Force,"  1866;  "Studies  in  Church  History,"  1869;  "History  of  the 
Inquisition  of  the  Middle  Ages,"  1887-88. 

GOLDWIN  SMITH,  b.  England,  1823,  d.  1910.  Professor  of  Modern 
History  at  Oxford,  1858-66;  at  Cornell  Univ.,  Ithaca,  N.  Y.,  1868-71; 
later  resident  at  Toronto.  "Irish  History  and  Irish  Character,"  1861; 
"Civil  War  in  America,"  1866;  "Relations  Between  America  and 
England,"  1869;  "History  of  the  United  States,"  1893. 

JUSTIN  WINSOR,  1831-1897.  Librarian  at  Boston  and  Harvard. 
Editor  of  "Memorial  History  of  Boston,"  1880-81;  "Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America"  (8  vols.),  1885-89;  "Christopher  Colum 
bus,"  1891. 


MISCELLANEOUS    WRITERS  323 

ANDREW  DICKSON  WHITE,  b.  N.  Y.,  1832.  Professor  of  History; 
President  of  Cornell  University;  U.  S.  Ambassador  to  Germany. 
"Warfare  of  Science,"  1876;  "The  New  Germany,"  1882;  "Autobiog 
raphy,"  1905. 

HUBERT  HOWE  BANCROFT,  b.  O.,  1832.  Resident  of  California. 
Gathered  materials  for  and  edited  "History  of  the  Pacific  States,"  in 
39  volumes,  1882-90. 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS,  JR.,  b.  Boston,  1835.  Lawyer  and  poli 
tician.  "Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,"  1892;  "Massa 
chusetts:  Its  Historians  and  its  History,"  1893. 

HENRY  ADAMS,  b.  Boston,  1838.  Professor  and  editor.  "John 
Randolph"  1882;  "History  of  the  United  States"  (9  vols.),  1889-91. 

JAMES  SCHOULER,  b.  Mass.,  1839.  Historian  and  legal  writer  and 
lecturer.  "History  of  the  United  States  Under  the  Constitution" 
(6  vols.),  1880-1899. 

ALFRED  T.  MAHAN,  b.  West  Point,  N.  Y.,  1840.  Captain  in  the 
navy  since  1885.  "Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History,  1660-1783," 
1890;  "Life  of  Farragut;"  "Life  of  Nelson,"  etc. 

JOHN  CLARK  RIDPATH,  1841-1900.  Professor  and  editor.  "Popu 
lar  History  of  the  United  States,"  "Cyclopedia  of  Universal  History," 
"Great  Races  of  Mankind"  (1894),  Lives  of  Garfield,  Blaine,  Gladstone, 
etc. 

HERMANN  EDUARD  VON  HOLST,  b.  Russia,  1841,  d.  1904.  Professor 
in  Germany  and  at  the  University  of  Chicago.  "Constitutional  and 
Political  History  of  the  United  States"  (8  vols.),  1876-1892. 

JOHN  FISKE,  1842-1901.  Lecturer  on  Philosophy,  Assistant  Li 
brarian,  and  member  of  the  Board  of  Overseers  at  Harvard.  Historian, 
philosopher,  and  evolutionist.  "Myths  and  Myth-Makers,"  1872; 
"Darwinism,"  1879;  "The  Destiny  of  Man,"  1884;  "The  Beginnings  of 
New  England,"  1889;  etc.,  etc. 

JAMES  FORD  RHODES,  b.  Cleveland,  1848.  "History  of  the  United 
States  from  the  Compromise  of  1850,"  (8  vols.,  1893-1912). 

HENRY  CABOT  LODGE,  b.  Boston,  1850.  Lawyer  and  senator. 
"Short  History  of  the  English  Colonies  in  America,"  1881;  "The 
Story  of  the  American  Revolution,"  "Alexander  Hamilton,"  etc. 


324  APPENDIX 

JOHN  BACH  McMASTER,  b.  Brooklyn,  1852.  Civil  engineer;  Pro 
fessor  of  History  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  "A  History  of 
the  People  of  the  United  States"  (8  vols.,  1883-1912). 

WOODROW  WILSON,  b.  Va.,  1856.  Lecturer;  Professor  of  Jurispru 
dence  and  Politics  at  Princeton;  governor  of  New  Jersey;  President  of 
the  United  States.  "Congressional  Government,"  1885;  "The  State," 
"Elements  of  Historical  and  Practical  Politics,"  1889;  "A  History  of  the 
American  People,"  1902;  etc. 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT,  b.  N.  Y.,  1858.  Adventurer  in  the  west; 
colonel  in  the  war  with  Spain;  governor  of  New  York;  President  of  the 
U.  S.  "The  Naval  War  of  1812,"  1882;  "Essays  on  Practical  Politics," 
1888;  "Ranch  Life  and  the  Hunting  Trail,"  1888;  "The  Winning  of  the 
West,"  1889;  "Oliver  Cromwell,"  1900;  "The  Strenuous  Life"  (essays 
and  addresses),  1900;  etc. 

LITERARY   HISTORIANS 

MOSES  COIT  TYLER,  1835-1900.  Professor  of  American  History  at 
Cornell.  "History  of  American  Literature  from  1607-1765,"  1878; 
"The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,"  1897. 

THOMAS  R.  LOUNSBURY,  b.  N.  Y.,  1838.  Professor  of  English  at 
Yale.  "History  of  the  English  Language,"  1879;  "James  Fenimore 
Cooper,"  1882;  "Studies  in  Chaucer,"  1891;  "Shakespeare  as  a 
Dramatic  Artist,"  1901. 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  RICHARDSON,  b.  Maine,  1851.  Professor  of  Eng 
lish  Literature  at  Dartmouth  College.  "A  Primer  of  American  Lit 
erature,"  1878;  "American  Literature,  1607-1885,"  1890. 

BARRETT  WENDELL,  b.  Boston,  1855.  Professor  of  English  at  Har 
vard.  "Life  of  Cotton  Mather,"  1891;  "Stelligeri,  and  Other  Essays," 
1893;  "Literary  History  of  America,"  1900. 

PHILOSOPHERS,    SOCIOLOGISTS,    ETC. 

ELISHA  MULFORD,  1833-1885.  Episcopal  clergyman  and  philo 
sophical  writer.  "The  Nation,"  1870;  "The  Republic  of  God,"  1881. 

MONCURE  D.  CONWAY,  1832-1907.  Methodist,  later  Unitarian, 
clergyman.  "The  Rejected  Stone,"  1861;  "The  Eastward  Pilgrim 
age,"  1870;  "Christianity,"  1876;  "Demonology  and  Devil-Lore,"  1878. 


MISCELLANEOUS    WRITERS  325 

WILLIAM  TORREY  HARRIS,  1835-1909.  Lecturer  at  Concord  School 
cf  Philosophy;  U.  S.  Commissioner  of  Education.  "Introduction  to 
the  Study  of  Philosophy,"  1889;  "Hegel's  Logic,"  1890;  "Psychologic 
Foundations  of  Education;"  etc. 

EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN,  b.  Ireland,  1831,  d.  1902.  Journalist 
and  lawyer.  Established  The  Nation;  edited  The  Nation  and  the  New 
York  Evening  Post.  "Government"  (in  the  American  Science  Series); 
"Problems  of  Democracy;"  "Unforseen  Tendencies  of  Democracy" 
1898;  etc. 

HENRY  GEORGE,  1839-1896.  Political  economist.  "Progress  and 
Poverty,"  1879;  "The  Land  Question,"  1883;  "Social  Problems,"  1884; 


etc. 


^  FRANCIS  A.  WALKER,  1840-1897.  Brevetted  brigadier-general  in 
Civil  War;  commissioner  of  Indian  affairs;  professor  at  Yale;  presi 
dent  of  Mass.  Inst.  of  Technology.  "The  Indian  Question,"  1874; 
^"The  Wages  Question,"  1876;  "Money,  Trade,  and  Industry,"  1879; 
"Land  and  Its  Rent,"  1883;  "Political  Economy,"  1883;  etc. 

SCIENTISTS,    NATURALISTS,    AND    TRAVELLERS 

See  text  for  BURROUGHS. 

JOHN  MUIR,  b.  Scotland,  1838.  Explorer;  discoverer  of  the  Muir 
Glacier,  Alaska;  Avriter  on  the  natural  history  of  the  Pacific  Coast. 
"The  Mountains  of  California,"  1894. 

MAURICE  THOMPSON,  b.  Ind.,  1844;  d.  1901.  Civil  engineer,  lawyer, 
state  geologist,  journalist.  "By- Ways  and  Bird  Notes,"  1885;  "Sylvan 
Secrets  in  Bird-Song  and  Books,"  1887;  "My  Winter  Garden,"  1900; 
etc.  Also  poems,  and  several  novels:  "A  Tallahassee  Girl,"  1882; 
"Alice  of  Old  Vincennes,"  1900. 

LAFCADIO  HEARN,  b.  Ionian  Islands,  1850;  d.  1904.  Of  Irish  and 
Greek  parentage.  Resident  of  New  Orleans,  New  York,  and  Japan. 
Essays  chiefly  remarkable  for  novelty  of  subject  and  poetic  style. 
"Stray  Leaves  from  Strange  Literature,"  1885;  "Glimpses  of  Unfam 
iliar  Japan,"  1894;  "Out  of  the  East,"  1895;  etc.  Also  several  stories: 
"Chita,"  1889;  "Youma,  the  Story  of  a  West  Indian  Slave,"  1890;  etc. 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN,  b.  N.  Y.,  1851.  President  of  the  Leland 
Stanford  Jr.  University.  "Science  Sketches,"  1888;  "The  Care  and 
Culture  of  Men,"  1896;  "Matka  and  Kotik,  a  Tale  of  the  Mist-Islands," 


326  APPENDIX 

1897;  "Footnotes  to  Evolution."  Also  poems,  and  numerous  works 
in  science.  "The  Blood  of  the  Nation,"  1902;  "The  Human  Harvest," 
1907. 

ERNEST  EVAN  THOMPSON  SETON,  b.  England,  1860.  Lived  in  back 
woods  of  Canada,  1866-70;  on  western  plains,  1882-87.  Animal  painter 
and  illustrator;  naturalist  to  the  government  of  Manitoba;  art  student 
at  Paris;  resident  of  New  York.  "Wild  Animals  I  Have  Known," 
1898;  "The  Biography  of  a  Grizzly,"  1899;  "Lives  of  the  Hunted," 
1901;  etc. 

STEWART  EDWARD  WHITE,  b.  Mich.,  1873.  "The  Blazed  Trail," 
1902;  "The  Silent  Places,"  1904;  "The  Mountains,"  1904;  "Arizona 
Nights,"  1907;  etc. 

CRITICAL   AND    DISCURSIVE    ESSAYISTS 

See  text  for  WHIPPLE,  HOLLAND,  MITCHELL,  HALE,  HIGGINSON,  CURTIS,  NORTON, 
WARNER,  and  STEDMAN. 

WILLIAM  WINTER,  b.  Mass.,  1836.  Journalist,  'orator,  poet,  and 
critic.  Essays,  chiefly  in  dramatic  criticism  and  upon  English  scenes 
and  life.  Poetry:  "The  Convent,"  1854;  "The  Queen's  Domain,"  1858; 
"Thistledown,"  1878;  etc.  Prose:  "English  Rambles,"  1883;  "Henry 
Irving,"  1885;  "Shakespeare's  England,"  1886;  "Gray  Days  and  Gold," 
1891;  "The  Life  and  Art  of  Edwin  Booth,"  1894;  etc. 

LAURENCE  HUTTON,  1843-1904.  Merchant,  journalist,  lecturer, 
dramatic  and  art  critic.  "Plays  and  Players,"  1875;  "Literary  Land 
marks  of  London,"  1885;  "Curiosities  of  the  American  Stage,"  1890;  etc. 

HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE,  b.  N.  Y.,  1845.  Associate  editor  of  The 
Outlook.  "My  Study  Fire,"  1890  (second  series,  1894);  "Essays  in 
Literary  Interpretation,"  1892;  "Essays  on  Nature  and  Culture," 
1896;  "Essays  on  Books  and  Culture,"  1896;  "William  Shakespeare, 
Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Man,"  1900;  etc. 

WILLIAM  CRARY  BROWNELL,  b.  N.  Y.,  1851.  Editor.  "French 
Traits,"  1889;  "Victorian  Prose  Masters,"  1901;  etc. 

SAMUEL  McCnoRD  CROTHERS,  b.  111.,  1857.  Unitarian  minister 
at  Cambridge,  Mass.  "The  Gentle  Reader,"  1903;  Humanly  Speak 
ing,"  1912;  etc. 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE,  b.  Pa.,  1852.  Clergyman;  Professor  of  English 
Literature  at  Princeton.  "The  Reality  of  Religion,"  1884;  "The 


MISCELLANEOUS    WRITERS  327 

Poetry  of  Tennyson,"  1890;  "The  Gospel  for  a  World  of  Sin,"  1899; 
"Fisherman's  Luck,  and  Other  Uncertain  Things,"  1899.  Also  poems 
and  stories. 

JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN,  b.  New  York,  1862.  Lawyer.  "Emerson,  and 
Other  Essays,"  1897;  "Causes  and  Consequences"  (political  essays), 
1898;  "Practical  Agitation,"  1900. 

AGNES  REPPLIER,  b.  Philadelphia,  1859.  "Books  and  Men,"  1888; 
"Points  of  View,"  1891;  "Essays  in  Idleness,"  1893;  etc. 

PAUL  ELMER  MORE  b.  St.  Louis,  1864.  Editor.  "Shelburne 
Essays,"  1904-1909. 

IRVING  BABBITT,  b.  Ohio,  1865.  Professor  of  French  at  Harvard. 
"Literature  and  the  American  College,"  1908;  "The  New  Laokoon," 
1911;  "Masters  of  Modern  French  Criticism,"  1912. 

HUMORISTS 

See  text  for  MARK  TWAIN  and  STOCKTON. 

CHARLES  GODFREY  LELAND,  1824-1903.  Journalist,  industrial 
educator.  "Hans  Breitmann's  Ballads"  (in  Pennsylvania  Dutch 
dialect),  1868,  and  many  books  on  gypsy  lore,  etc. 

DAVID  Ross  LOCKE  ("Petroleum  V.  Nasby"),  1833-1888.  Satirical 
letters  from  the  "Confedrit  X  Roads,"  of  political  influence  during 
and  after  the  Civil  War.  "The  Nasby  Papers,"  1864;  "Swingin' 
Round  the  Cirkle,"  1866;  "Ekkoes  from  Kentucky,"  1868;  "Nasby 
in  Exile,"  1882;  etc. 

CHARLES  FARRAR  BROWNE  ("Artemus  Ward"),  b.  Me.,  1834;  d. 
England,  1867.  Printer;  lecturer  in  America  and  England.  "Artemus 
Ward:  His  Book,"  1862;  "His  Travels,"  1865;  "In  London,"  1867; 
"His  Panorama,"  1869. 

FINLEY  PETER  DUNNE,  b.  Chicago,  1867.  "Mr.  Dooley  in  Peace 
and  War,"  1898;  "Mr.  Dooley  in  the  Hearts  of  his  Countrymen," 
1899;  etc. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  OUTLINE1 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 

AMERICAN    HISTORY 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

LITERATURE 

1607 

Landing  at  James 

Smith's  True  Rela 

James  I.  reigns,  1603-1625 

to 

town,  1607 

tion,  1608 

Milton  born,  1608 

1700 

Dutch  trading-post 

Strachey's      True 

King    James     version     of 

on        Manhattan 

Repertory,    1610 

Bible  completed,  1611 

Island,  1613 

Bradford  and  Win- 

Shakespeare     died,     1616 

Landing     at     Ply- 

slow's  Diary,  1622 

Bacon's  Essays,  1625 

mouth  Rock, 

The      Bay      Psalm 

Milton's    L'  Allegro,    1632 

1620 

Book,  1640 

The  Commonwealth,  1649 

Harvard        College 

Ward's  Simple  Cob 

Walton's    Complete    Ang 

founded,  1636 

bler,  1647 

ler,  1653 

First  printing  press 

Anne     Bradstreet's 

The  Restoration,  1660 

in  America,  1639 

Tenth  Muse,  1650 

Milton's     Paradise     Lost, 

King  Philip's  War, 

Eliot's        Algonkin 

1667 

1675 
Salem       witchcraft 

Bible,    1661-63 
Wi  ggl  es  worth's 

Dry  den  poet  laureate,  1670 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Prog 

trials,  1692 

Day     of     Doom, 

ress,  1678-84 

The     incipient     re 

1662 

William  and  Mary  reign, 

volt  against  An- 

Mather's    Wonders 

1689 

dros,  1689 

of    the    Invisible 

Locke's   On   Human   Un 

World,   1693 

derstanding,  1690 

1700 

Franklin     originat 

Mather's  Magnalia, 

Queen  Anne  reigns,  1702- 

to 

ed     the     Library 

1702 

1714 

1765 

Company  of  Phil 
adelphia,        1731 

The    Boston    News 
Letter          estab 

Swift's      Battle      of      the 
Books,  1704 

Washington     born, 
1732 

lished,  1704 
Sewall's           Diary, 

The  Spectator,  1711 
Pope's     Windsor     Forest, 

Braddock's    defeat, 

1652-1730 

1713 

1755 

Poor  Richard's  Al 

Defoe's     Robinson      Cru 

Stamp  Act,  1765 

manac,  1732-? 

soe,  1719 

Edwards's  Freedom 

Swift's    Gulliver's    Trav 

of  the  Will,  1754 

els,  1726 

Godfrey's           The 

Richardson's           Clarissa 

Prince     of     Par- 

Harlowe,  1748 

thia,   1758   (writ 

Fielding's      Tom      Jones, 

ten) 

1749 

Gray's  Elegy,  1751 

Johnson's          Dictionary, 

1755 

*  This  outline  is  much  condensed,  (the  English  part  disproportionately  so).  Only  such 
ly  or  important  works  of  a  writer  are  recorded  as  will  suffice  to  indicate  the  period  of  his 
ivitv  and  influence.  Minor  events  in  history  are  occasionally  admitted  when  they  have 


early 

activity 

some  bearing  on  literature. 


^ for  instance,  the  opening  of  a  university  in  the  South  or  the  West 

may  have  a  significance  that  the  opening  of  a  similar  institution  in  the  East  does  not.     No 


class  of  events  is  recorded  with  completeness. 


528 


CHRONOLOGICAL   OUTLINE 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 

AMERICAN  HISTORY 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

LITERATURE 

1765 

The  Stamp  Act  Re 

The  Orators  —  Otis, 

George  III.  reigns,   1760- 

to 

pealed,  1766 

etc. 

1820 

1800 

Battles    of    Lexing 

Woolman's       Jour 

Goldsmith's  Deserted  Vil 

ton    and    Bunker 

nal,  1774 

lage,  1770 

Hill,  1775 

Trumbull's   M'Fin- 

Burke's  Speech  on  Amer 

Declaration   of   In 

gal,  1775 

ican  Taxation,  1774 

dependence,  1776 

Paine's  Crisis,  1776- 

Gibbon's       Decline      and 

Articles  of  Confed 

83 

Fall  of  the  Roman  Em 

eration,     1777-81 

Freneau's      Poems, 

pire,  1776 

The       Constitution 

1786;  1795 

Cowper's  Task,  1785 

formed,  1787 

The  Federalist,  1788 

White's  Selborne,  1789 

Capital      at      New 

Franklin's    Autobi 

Boswell's  Johnson,  1791 

York,     1789;     at 

ography,    1789 

Burns's  Poems,  1793 

Philadelphia, 

Washington's  Fare 

Lyrical  Ballads,  by  Words 

1790;    at    Wash 

well          Address, 

worth    and     Coleridge, 

ington,  1800 

1796 

1798 

Vermont,           Ken 

Hopkinson's      Hail 

tucky,   and  Ten 

Columbia,     1798 

nessee     admitted 

to  the  Union 

1800 

Population,   5,000,- 

Brown's  Romances 

Edinburgh  Review  estab 

to 

000 

1798-1801 

lished,  1802 

1830 

Louisiana           pur 

Barlow's   Columbi- 

Scott's      Last      Minstrel, 

chase,  1803 

ad,  1807 

1805;  Lady  of  the  Lake, 

Fulton's      steamer, 

Irving's      Knicker 

1810;  Waverley  Novels, 

1807 

bocker,            1809; 

1814-31 

The  Embargo  Act, 

Sketch-book,1819; 

Byron's     Childe     Harold, 

1807 

Columbus,    1828 

1812-18 

War  with  England, 

Bryant's        Thana- 

Battle  of  Waterloo,   1815 

1812-15 

topsis,1817;Poems 

Moore's      Lalla      Rookh, 

Florida    purchased, 

1821 

1817 

1819 

Halleck     and 

Keats's  Poems,  1817 

Missouri     Compro 

Drake's      Croaker 

Shelley's  Prometheus  Un 

mise,  1820 

Poems,  1819 

bound,  1820 

"Monroe           Doc 

Cooper's       Precau- 

DeQuincey's   Confessions, 

trine,"    1823 

tion,1820;TheSpy, 

1821 

University    of    Vir- 

1821;ThePioneers, 

Lamb's    Essays    of    Elia, 

giniaopened,  1825 

1823;  The  Last  of 

1822-24 

Ohio,  Louisiana,  In 

theMohicans,1826 

diana,    Mississip 

Novels      of      Neal, 

pi,    Illinois,    Ala 

Sedgwick,         and 

bama,  Maine,  and 

Paulding 

Missouri    admit 

Dana's    Buccaneer, 

ted 

1827 

Poe's      Tamerlane, 

1827 

Webster's    Diction 

• 

ary,  '1828 

330 


APPENDIX 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 


1830 

to 
1840 


Population,  13,- 
000,000 

The  American  Anti- 
Slavery  Society 
formed,  1831 

Nullification  Act  of 
South  Carolina, 
1832 

Texas  a  Republic, 
1836 

Arkansas  and 
Michigan  ad 
mitted 


Webster's  Reply  to 
Hayne,  1830 

Channing's  Dis 
courses,  1830 

Kennedy's  Swal 
low  Barn,  1832 

Bryant's  Poems, 
1833 

Irving's  Alhambra, 
1833 

Poe's  MS.  Found  in 
a  Bottle,  1833 

Longfellow's  Ou- 
tre-Mer,  1833; 
Voices  of  the 
Night,  1839 

Simms's  The  Yem- 
assee,  1835 

Willis's  Pencillings 
by  the  Way,  1835 

Emerson's  Nature, 
1836 

Holmes's  Poems, 
1836 

Hawthorne's 
Twice-Told  Tales 
1837 

Whittier's  Poems, 
1837;  Ballads  and 
Anti-Slavery, 
Poems,  1838 


Tennyson's  early  poems, 
1830 

Reform  Bill,  1832 

Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartus, 
1833;  French  Revolu 
tion,  1837 

Dickens's  Pickwick  Pa 
pers,  1836-37 

Victoria  Queen,  1837 

Electric    Telegraph,    1837 


CHRONOLOGICAL   OUTLINE 


331 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 


1840 

to 
1850 


Population,  17,- 
000,000 

Independent  Treas 
ury  Act,  1840 

Univ.  of  Michigan 
opened,  1841 

Morse  Telegraph  in 
the  U.  S.,  1844 

War  with  Mexico, 
1845-48 

Smithsonian  Insti 
tution  organized, 
1846. 

Gold  discovered  in 
California,  1848 

Florida,  Texas, 

Iowa,  and  Wis 
consin  admitted 


Cooper's  Pathfind 
er,  1840;  Deer- 
slayer,  1841 

Dana's  Two  Years 
Before  the  Mast, 
1840 

Emerson's  Essays, 
1841-44;  Poems, 
1847 

Lowell's  A  Year's 
Life,  1841;  Big- 
low  Papers  (first 
series),  Fable  for 
Critics,  and  Sir 
Launfal,  1848 

Longfellow's  Bal 
lads,  1841;Evan- 
geline,  1847 

Prescott's  Conquest 
of  Mexico,  1843 

Margaret  Fuller's 
Woman  in  the 
Nineteenth  Cen 
tury,  1844 

Poe's  Raven,   1845 

Hawthorne's  Moss 
es  from  an  Old 
Manse,  1846 

Taylor's  Views 

Afoot,  1846 

Parkman's  Cali 
fornia  and  Ore 
gon  Trail,  1849 

Thoreau's  Week, 
1849 

Ticknor's  Spanish 
Literature,  1849 

Poe  died,  1849 


Browning's  Sordello,  1840 

Carlyle's  Hero- Worship, 
1841 

Wordsworth  poet  laure 
ate,  1843 

Macaulay's  Essays,  1843; 
History  of  England, 
1848-60 

Ruskin's  Modern  Paint 
ers,  1843-60 

Repeal  of  Corn  Laws, 
1846 

Thackeray's  Vanity  Fair, 
1847-48 

Mill's  Political  Economy, 
1848 


332 


APPENDIX 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 


185 

to 

186( 


Population,         23 

000,000 

The  Omnibus  Bil 

(including        th 

Fugitive       Slav 

Law),  1850 

Kansas  -  Nebrask 

Bill,  1854 
Astor  Library  (N 
Y.  City)  and  Bos 
ton  Public  Libra 
ry  opened,  1854 
Dred  Scott  Decis 

ion,  1857 
Lincoln   -    Dougla 

debate,  1858 
John  Brown's  raid 

1859 

California,  Minne 
sota,  and  Oregon 
admitted 


Webster's  Seventl 
of  March  Speech 
1850 

Hawthorne's  Scar 
let  Letter,  1850 
House  of  the  Sev 
en  Gables,  1851 
Blithedale  Ro 
mance,  1852 

Emerson's  Repre 
sentative  Men 
1850 

Mitchell's  Reveries 
of  a  Bachelor. 
1850 

Stowe'sUncleTom's 
Cabin,  1852 

Choate's  Eulogy  on 
Webster,  1853 

Thoreau's  Walden, 
1854 

Hayne's  Poems, 
1855 

Irving's  Washing 
ton,  1855-59 

Longfellow's  Hia 
watha,  1855 

Whitman's  Leaves 
of  Grass,  1855 

Curtis's  Prue  and 
I,  1856 

Motley's  Dutch  Re 
public,   1856 
Holland's   Titcomb 
Letters,  1858 

lolmes's  Autocrat 

,  1858 

Cooper,      Webster, 

Irving,     Prescott 

died. 


Wordsworth  died,  Ten 
nyson  poet  laureate, 
1850;  In  Memoriam, 
1850 

Crimean  War,   1854-56 

Matthew  Arnold's  Poems, 
1855 

Mrs.  Browning's  Aurora 
Leigh,  1856 

George  Eliot's  Clerical 
Life,  1858;  Adam  Bede, 
1859 

Darwin's  Origin  of  Spe 
cies,  1859 

Macaulay,  De  Quincey 
died,  1859 


CHRONOLOGICAL   OUTLINE 


333 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 

1860 

Population,         31,- 

Hawthorne's    Mar 

George  .      Eliot's         Silas 

to 

000,000;   number 

ble    Faun,     1860 

Marner,  1861;  Romola, 

1870 

of    slaves,    4,000,- 

Emerson's  Conduct 

1863 

000 

of  Life,  1860;  May 

Spencer's      First      Princi 

Secession   of   South 

Day,  1867 

ples,  1862 

Carolina,   1860 

Tirnrod's       Poems, 

Huxley's   Man's   Place  in 

Civil  War,  1861-65 

1860 

Nature,  1863 

Emancipation 

Holmes's  Elsie  Ven- 

Newman's  Apologia,  1864 

Proclamation, 

ner,  1861 

Arnold's    Essays   in    Crit 

1863 

Julia  Ward  Howe's 

icism,  1865-88 

Assassination         of 

Battle   Hymn   of 

Dickens's      Our      Mutual 

Lincoln,  1865 

the         Republic, 

Friend,  1865 

Thirteenth    Consti 

1861 

Swinburne's    Poems    and 

tutional    Amend 

Winthrop's       Cecil 

Ballads,  1866 

ment,  1865 

Dreeme,     1861 

Parliamentary         Reform 

Vassar           College 

Longfellow's    Tales 

Bill,  1867 

opened,  1865 

of  a  Wayside  Inn, 

Browning's  Ring  and  the 

Atlantic  cable  per 

1863 

Book,  1868 

manently       laid, 

Lowell's  Commem 

Morris's     Earthly     Para 

1866 

oration  Ode,  1865 

dise,  1868 

Purchase    of    Alas 

Whitman's      Drum 

Gladstone    Prime    Minis 

ka,  1867 

Taps,  1865 

ter,  1868 

University    of    the 

\Vhittier'  s       Snow- 

Mrs.     Browning,     Thack 

South        opened, 

Bound,  1866 

eray,  Landor  died 

1868 

Bret   Harte's    Con 

First    Pacific    rail 

densed      Novels, 

road,  1869 

1867 

Kansas,    West  Vir 

Longfellow's  Trans 

ginia,       Nevada, 

lation  of  the  Di- 

and  Nebraska  ad 

vina  Commedia, 

mitted 

1867 

Sill's       Hermitage, 

1867 

Miss  Alcott's  Little 

Women,  1868 

Kale's   Man   With 

out    a    Country, 

1868 

Aldrich's    Story    of 

a  Bad  Boy,  1869 

Mark    Twain's    In 

nocents    Abroad, 

1869 

Winthrop,        Thor- 

eau,  Everett  died 

334 


APPENDIX 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 


1870 

to 
1880 


Population,  39,- 
000,000 

Reconstruction 
completed,  1870 

University  of  Mich 
igan  opened  to 
women,  1870 

Civil  Service  Re 
form  Act,  1871 

Chicago    fire,    1871 

Financial  crisis, 
1873 

Centennial  Exposi 
tion  at  Philadel 
phia,  1876 

Railroad  riots,  1877 

Yellow  fever  epi 
demic,  1878 

Resumption  of  spe- 
ciepayment,  1879 

Colorado   admitted 


Bryant's  transla 
tion  of  the  Iliad, 
1870;  of  the 
Odyssey,  1871-72 

Bret  Harte's  Luck 
of  Roaring  Camp, 
1870 

Lowell's  Among 
My  Books,  1870 

Taylor's  transla 
tion  of  first  part 
of  Faust,  1870 

Eggleston's  Hoos- 
ier  Schoolmas 
ter,  1871 

Burroughs's  Wake- 
Robin,  1871 

Miller's  Songs  of 
the  Sierras,  1871 

Howells's  Their 
Wedding  Jour 
ney,  1871 

Fiske's  Myths  and 
Myth  Makers, 
1872 

Aldrich's  Marjorie 
Daw,  1873 

Stedman's  Victori 
an  Poets,  1875 

Mark  Twain's  Tom 
Sawyer,  1876 

Lanier's  Poems, 
1876 

White's  Warfare  of 
Science,  1876 

James's  Daisy  Mil 
ler,  1878 

Cable's  Old  Creole 
Days,  1879 

Stockton's  Rudder 
Grange,  1879 

Simms,  Motley, 
Bryant,  Taylor 
died 


Rossetti's  Poems,  1870 
Huxley's     Lay     Sermons, 

1870 
Darwin's  Descent  of  Man, 

1871 
Dobson's      Vignettes      in 

Rhyme,  1873 
Pater's     Studies     in     the 

Renaissance,  1873 
Stephen's  Hours  in  a  Li 
brary,  1874 
Froude's     Julius     Caesar, 

1876 
Hardy's    Return    of    the 

Native,  1877 
Meredith's     The     Egoist, 

1879 

Anti-rent   agitation,    1879 
Dickens,  Kingsley  died 


CHRONOLOGICAL   OUTLINE 


335 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND 
LITERATURE 

1880 

Population,         50,- 

Cable's  The  Grand- 

Lang's    Ballades    in    Blue 

to 

000,000,  growing 

issimes,  1880 

China,  1880 

1900 

to  76,000,000 
Civil     Service     Re 

George's      Progress 
andPoverty,1880 

Stevenson's         Virginibus 
Puerisque,  1881;  Treas 

form    Bill,     1883 

Harris's  Uncle  Re 

ure  Island,  1883 

Inter-State      Com 

mus,  1880 

Tennyson's  Locksley  Hall 

merce  Act,   1887 

Howells's    A    Mod 

Sixty  Years  After,  1888 

Catholic     Universi 

ern     Instance, 

Bryce's    American     Com 

ty,     Washington, 

1882;  Rise  of  Silas 

monwealth,  1888 

opened,  1890 
International  Copy 

Lapham,  1885 
Helen    Fiske    Jack 

Kipling's  Plain  Tales  from 
the  Hills,  1888;  Ballads, 

right  Act,  1891 

son's       Ramona, 

1892 

World's      Fair      at 

1884 

Watson's       Wrordsworth's 

Chicago,  1893 

MarkTwain'sHuck- 

Grave,  1890 

Klondike       Excite 

leberry  Finn,  1884 

Barrie's    Little    Minister, 

ment,  1897 

Parkman's      Mont- 

1891 

Spanish  -  American 

calm  and  Wolfe, 

Austin  poet  laureate,  1895 

War,   and  acqui 

1884 

War  in  South  Africa,  1899 

sition     of     Porto 

Stedman's  Poets  of 

Queen  Victoria  died,  1901 

Rico      and      the 

America,  1885 

George  Eliot,  Carlyle,  Dar 

Philippines,  1898 

Lowell's    Democra 

win,    Rossetti,    Arnold, 

Annexation  of  Ha 

cy,  1886 

Browning  died,    (1880- 

waii,   1898 

Mary  E.   Wilkins's 

89) 

Troubles  in  China, 

Humble           Ro 

Newman,             Tennyson, 

1900 

mance,  1887 

Froude,   Pater,   Steven 

Whitman's  Novem 

son,      Morris,      Ruskin 

ber  Boughs,  1888 

died,  (1890-1900) 

Fiske's    Beginnings 

of  New  England, 

1889 

Field's  Little  Book 

of  Western  Verse, 

1890 

Holmes's   Over  the 

Tea-cups,  1890 

Curtis's       Orations 

and       Addresses, 

1893-94 

Lowell's        Letters, 

1893 

Holland,        Lanier, 

•  Emerson,     Long 

fellow,  Mrs.  Jack 

son,  Sill,  Lowell, 

Curtis,   Whittier, 

Whitman,    Park- 

man,         Holmes, 

Mrs.   Stowe  died 

REFERENCES 


HISTORY    AND    CRITICISM 

A  Literary  History  of  America.  Barrett  WendelL  A  complete  sur 
vey,  biographical  and  critical,  exclusive  of  writers  still  living  in  1900. 
(Scribner.) 

American  Literature:  1607-1885.  Charles  F.  Richardson.  Critical 
only.  Inclusive  of  living  writers.  (Putnam.) 

A  History  of  American  Literature  During  the  Colonial  Time,  1607- 
1765.  Moses  Coit  Tyler.  Biographical  and  critical,  with  liberal  extracts. 
Exhaustive  and  indispensable  for  the  careful  study  of  the  early  period. 
(Putnam.) 

The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,  1763-1783.  Moses 
Coit  Tyler.  A  continuation  of  the  above.  (Putnam.) 

Poets  of  America.  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  1885.  Critical,  with 
special  chapters  on  Bryant,  Whittier,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Poe, 
Holmes,  Lowell,  Whitman,  and  Taylor.  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.) 

History  of  American  Verse.  James  L.  Onderdonk,  1901.  A  History 
of  Southern  Literature.  Carl  Holliday,  1905.  The  Literature  of  the 
South.  Montrose  J.  Moses,  1909. 

National  Studies  in  American  Letters.  Edited  by  G.  E.  Woodberry 
A  series  of  volumes  treating  American  authors  in  groups:  "Old 
Cambridge,"  T.  W.  Higginson;  "Brook  Farm,"  Lindsay  Swift;  "The 
Clergy  in  American  Life  and  Letters,"  D.  D.  Addison;  "The  Hoosiers," 
M.  Nicholson.  Others  in  preparation:  "The  Knickerbockers," 
H.  van  Dyke;  "The  American  Historical  Novel,"  P.  L.  Ford;  "Southern 
Humorists,"  J.  K.  Bangs;  "Flower  of  Essex,"  G.  E.  Woodberry. 

SELECTIONS 

Library  of  American  Literature.  Stedman  and  Hutchinson.  In 
eleven  volumes;  both  poetry  and  prose,  of  all  periods;  the  only  easily 
accessible  collection  of  specimens  from  the  early  period.  Contains 
also,  in  the  last  volume,  brief  biographical  notices. 

336 


REFERENCES  337 

An  American  Anthology.  Edmund  C.  Stedman.  Specimens  of 
American  poetry  from  1787  to  1900.  Intended  to  accompany  the 
critical  volume,  "Poets  of  America."  The  minor  poets  are  freely 
represented,  about  six  hundred  names  being  included.  Contains 
also  brief  biographical  notices.  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.) 

American  Prose.  Edited  by  G.  R.  Carpenter.  Selections  from 
twenty-five  representative  authors  from  Cotton  Mather  to  Parkman 
(living  authors  not  included),  with  critical  introductions  by  various 
writers.  (Macmillan.) 

Cyclopedia  of  American  Literature.  E.  A.  and  G.  L.  Duyckinck. 
Two  large  volumes;  revised  edition,  1875.  Extended  personal  and 
critical  notices,  with  liberal  selections.  Criticism  somewhat  anti 
quated.  Most  useful  for  biographies  and  selections  from  the  works  of 
early  or  less  important  and  even  quite  forgotten  writers. 

Library  of  Poetry  and  Song.  William  Cullen  Bryant.  Selections 
from  British  and  American  poets;  also  translations.  Published  1870. 

Selections  and  sometimes  entire  works  of  standard  authors  may  be 
found  in  inexpensive  form  in  the  "Lake  English  Classics;"  "River 
side  Literature  Series;"  and  "Cassell's  National  Library"  (paper). 


BIOGRAPHY 


There  are  standard  and  authorized  biographies  of  the  following 
writers : 

Alcott,  Louisa  M.    Life,  Letters,  and  Journals,  by  Mrs.  E.  D.  Cheney. 

Bryant.     By  Parke  Godwin,  2  vols. 

Channing,  Dr.  Wm.  E.     By  W.  H.  Channing. 

Clemens.     Mark  Twain:    A  Biography,  by  A.  B.  Paine,  1912. 

Dana,  R.  H.,  Jr.     By  C.  F.  Adams. 

Edwards,  Jonathan.  By  A.  V.  G.  Allen,  in  American  Religious 
Leaders  series. 

Emerson.  Memoir,  by  J.  E.  Cabot,  2  vols.  Emerson  in  Concord, 
by  E.  W.  Emerson. 

Franklin.     Life,  by  Jared  Sparks,  1844;  by  James  Parton,  1864. 

Hallcck.     Life  and  Letters,  by  J.  G.  Wilson. 

Harte.  Life,  by  H.  C.  Merwin,  1911.  Also  Life  and  Biography, 
by  T.  E.  Pemberton.  1903. 

Hawthorne.  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife,  by  Julian  Haw 
thorne,  2  vols. 

Holmes.     Life  and  Letters,  by  J.  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  2  vols. 


338  APPENDIX 

Irving.     By  Pierre  M.  Irving,  3  vols. 

Lanier.     Life,  by  Edward  Mims. 

Longfellow.     By  Samuel  Longfellow,  3  vols. 

Lowell.     Letters,  edited  by  C.  E.  Norton,  2  vols. 

Mather,  Cotton.     By  Barrett  Wendell. 

Motley.     Correspondence,  edited  by  G.  W.  Curtis. 

Ossoli,  Margaret  Fuller.  Memoirs,  by  Emerson,  Channing,  and 
Clarke. 

Parkman.     By  C.  H.  Farnham. 

Paulding.     Literary  Life,  by  W.  I.  Paulding. 

Payne,  John  Howard.     Life  and  Writings,  by  Gabriel  Harrison. 

Prescott.     By  George  Ticknor. 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher.     By  C.  E.  Stowe. 

Taylor.  Life  and  Letters,  by  Marie  Hansen  Taylor  and  H.  E. 
Scudder,  2  vols. 

Thoreau.     By  W.  E.  Channing. 

Whitman.     By  R.  M.  Bucke. 

Whittier.     Life  and  Letters,  by  S.  T.  Pickard,  2  vols. 

Special  series  of  biographies  are  as  follows: 

American  Men  of  Letters.  Edited  by  C.  D.  Warner.  Biographies 
of  Bryant,  Cooper,  Curtis,  Emerson,  Franklin,  Hawthorne  (in  prep 
aration),  Irving,  Longfellow  (in  preparation),  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli, 
Poe,  Prescott  (in  preparation),  Ripley,  Simms,  Taylor,  Thoreau,  Noah 
Webster,  Whittier  (in  preparation),  Willis. 

Great  Writers  Series.  Somewhat  shorter  biographies  than  the  above, 
mostly  by  British  authors,  and  containing  extensive  bibliographies. 
The  series  includes  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Thoreau, 
Whittier.  Of  Hawthorne  there  is  a  biography  also  in  the  English 
Men  of  Letters  Series. 

Beacon  Biographies.  Very  brief  lives  of  eminent  men,  among  them 
the  following  American  authors:  Agassiz,  Phillips  Brooks,  Cooper, 
Emerson,  Grant,  Hawthorne,  Jefferson,  Lowell,  Thomas  Paine, 
Daniel  Webster,  and  WThittier. 

GENERAL    REFERENCE 

Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Biography,  6  vols.  Concise 
accounts  of  all  Americans  of  note,  living  or  dead. 

Allibone's  Dictionary  of  Authors.  A  complete  list  of  authors,  titles, 
and  dates  of  publications.  The  supplement  is  brought  up  to  1891. 


REFERENCES  339 

Adams'  (0.  F.)  Dictionary  of  American  Authors.  Very  brief  sketches 
of  6000  American  authors.  Names,  dates,  and  titles  of  chief  books 
(without  dates).  Recent. 

Who's  Who  in  America.  Edited  by  A.  N.  Marquis,  bi-annually. 
Brief  sketches  of  living  Americans.  Useful  especially  for  the  latest 
writers. 

Whitcomb's  Chronological  Outlines  of  American  Literature.  A  care 
fully  arranged  table  of  important  authors,  books,  and  dates,  up  to 
1894. 

Further  references  will  be  found  in  the  following  study  lists  and 
exercises.  In  these  lists  the  general  histories  will  be  referred  to  by 
the  names  of  their  authors — Wendell,  Richardson,  Tyler,  and  Duyc- 
kinck  (1875  edition).  Other  abbreviations  are: 

L.  A.  L.  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "Library  of  American  Liter 
ature. 

A.  A.     Stedman's  "American  Anthology." 

L.  P.  S.     Bryant's  "Library  of  Poetry  and  Song." 

A.  P.      Carpenter's  "American  Prose." 

A.  M.  L.     "American  Men  of  Letters  Series." 

G.  W.  S.     "Great  Writers  Series." 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING  AND   STUDY 

I.     THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD 

For  the  history  of  the  period  consult  Lodge's  "English  Colonies  in 
America"  and  Fiske's  "Beginnings  of  New  England."  For  a  brief 
survey  of  the  literature,  see  chapter  xxi,  of  G.  P.  Fisher's  "Colonial 
Era,"  in  the  American  History  Series.  Read  Tyler,  chapter  i.;  Rich 
ardson,  pp.  16-23;  Wendell,  26-34.  A  graceful  sketch  of  the  period, 
with  interesting  engravings,  may  be  found  in  D.  G.  Mitchell's 
"American  Lands  and  Letters,"  chapters  i.  and  ii. 

Captain  John  Smith.  The  best  edition  of  Smith's  works  is  in 
"Arber's  English  Scholar's  Library."  Life,  by  C.  D.  Warner.  Criti 
cism:  Jameson's  "Historical  Writing  in  America,"  pp.  4-13;  Tyler; 
Richardson. 

Read  "The  General  History  of  Virginia,"  Book  III.,  chapter  ii. 
("Arber,"  II.,  391-403);  or  the  following  selections:  "L.  A.  L.,"  I., 
3-6,  10-17;  Tyler,  chapter  ii.  Collateral  reading:  "To  have  and  to 
Hold,"  by  Mary  Johnston  (Atlantic  Monthly,  1899-1900). 

William  Bradford,  Samuel  Sewall,  etc.  Bradford's  "History  of  Ply 
mouth  Plantation"  and  Sewall's  "Diary"  are  both  published  in 
the  Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  Criticism: 
C.  F.  Adams's  "Massachusetts:  Its  Historians  and  Its  History." 

Read  the  following  selections:  "L.  A.  L.,"  L,  93-94,  291,  300-301; 
II.,  189,  192-194,  248-254.  Collateral  reading:  Mrs.  Hemans's  "Land 
ing  of  the  Pilgri,ms;"  Longfellow's  "Courtship  of  Miles  Standish;" 
Mrs.  Stowe's  "The  Mayflower;"  Mrs.  J.  G.  Austin's  historical  novels, 
"Standish  of  Standish,"  "Betty  Alden,"  etc.;  Hawthorne's  "Grand 
father's  Chair,"  part  I.,  chapters  ii.,  iii.,  vi.,  viii.;  Whittier's  "Prophecy 
of  Samuel  Sewall;"  Lowell's  essay,  "New  England  Two  Centuries 
Ago." 

Poetry.  Read  "L.  A.  L.,"  I.  314-315,  II.,  495;  Wendell,  38-41; 
"Lovewell's  Fight,"  Duyckinck,  L,  444. 

Theology.,   etc.     Read  "L.   A.   L.,"   L,    192-195,   251-253,   276-278. 

340 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          341 

Cotton  Mather.  Life,  by  Barrett  Wendell,  in  "Makers  of  America 
Series."  Criticism:  Barrett  Wendell's  "Stelligeri,"  114-118;  Jame 
son's  "Historical  Writing  in  America,"  46-60. 

Read  selections  in  "L.  A.  L.,"  II.,  140-142;  or  in  "A.  P."  Collat 
eral  reading:  Hawthorne's  "Grandfather's  Chair,"  II.,  iv.,  v.;  WThit- 
tier's  "The  Garrison  of  Cape  Ann;"  Longfellow's  "The  Phantom 
Ship"  (cp.  Mather's  account,  "A.  P.,"  p.  6). 

Jonathan  Edwards.  Life,  by  A.  V.  G.  Allen,  in  "American  Re 
ligious  Leaders  Series." 

Read  "L.  A.  L.,"  II.,  373-375;  or  "A.  P.,"  16-18.  Collateral  read 
ing:  Holmes's  "Pages  from  an  Old  Volume  of  Life,"  chap.  xi. 

John  Woolman.  WToolman's  "Journal,"  edited  by  Whittier. 
Read  Whittier's  Introduction,  pp.  1-4,  and  chapter  i.  See  Lamb's 
"A  Quaker's  Meeting,"  in  "Essays  of  Elia." 

Find,  in  any  of  these  early  writers,  an  eloquent  passage,  a  bit  of 
imaginative  description,  a  flash  of  wit,  or  a  line  of  real  poetry.  Who 
were  the  great  English  poets  between  1650  and  1750?  English  essay 
writers?  What  famous  religious  allegory  was  written  in  England  in 
this  period?  What  famous  book  for  boys? 

II.     TRANSITION:  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 

The  fullest  biography  of  Franklin  is  that  by  James  Parton,  in  two 
volumes;  others  are  by  McMaster,  in  "A.  M.  L.,"  by  Morse,  in 
"American  Statesmen  Series,"  and  by  P.  L.  Ford — "The  Many-Sided 
Franklin,"  first  printed  serially  in  The  Century"  1898-99.  The  best 
edition  of  the  "Autobiography"  is  that  edited  by  Bigelow,  in  3  vols., 
1868  (with  additional  matter,  1874).  Inexpensive  reprints  of  earlier 
editions  may  be  found  in  the  "Lake  English  Classics,"  Cassell's 
"National  Library,"  etc.  "Poor  Richard's  Almanac"  is  printed  in 
the  "Thumb-Nail  Series." 

Read  Parton's  "Life,"  II.,  viii.,  647-655.  Read  "L.  A.  L.,"  III., 
15,  17-21,  26-29;  or  "A.  P.,"  36-47.  The  whole  of  the  "Autobiog 
raphy"  should,  if  possible,  be  read.  Study  chapter  two  (or  chapters 
one  and  two)  for  revelations  of  Franklin's  ready  helpfulness,  his 
practical  turn  of  mind,  his  willingness  to  experiment,  his  inclina 
tion  to  moralize,  and  other  traits  of  character.  Was  he  brave?  WTas 
he  modest?  Was  he  honest?  Was  he  too  frugal  to  be  generous,  or 
too  generous  to  be  frugal?  What  did  he  read?  Examine  the  chapter 


342  APPENDIX 

also  for  examples  of  homely  Saxon  language,  and  for  words  used  in 
an  old  or  strange  sense.  Gather  a  number  of  Poor  Richard's  maxims 
and  commit  a  few  to  memory.  See  the  poem  by  Franklin  in  "L.  P.  S." 

III.  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD 

Read  Tyler's  "Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,"  Vol. 
I.,  pp.  1-12;  Richardson,  pp.  .36-53;  Wendell,  II.,  vii.  and  viii.  For 
special  authors,  see  Tyler's  "Three  Men  of  Letters"  (Berkeley, 
Trumbull,  and  Barlow);  Mitchell's  "American  Lands  and  Letters." 
History:  John  Fiske's  "American  Revolution,"  2  vols.;  A.  B.  Hart's 
"Formation  of  the  Union"  (Epochs  of  American  History);  Lives 
of  Hamilton,  Jefferson,  etc.  Selections:  "L.  A.  L.;"  "A.  P."  (from 
Washington,  Paine,  and  Jefferson);  Duyckinck;  D.  J.  Brewer's 
"World's  Best  Orations,"  10  vols.;  F.  Moore's  "American  Elo 
quence,"  2  vols.;  F.  Moore's  "Songs  and  Ballads  of  the  American 
Revolution"  (1856);  Eggleston's  "American  War  Ballads  and  Lyrics." 
Collateral  reading:  Pierpont's  "Warren's  Address;"  Longfellow's 
"Paul  Revere's  Ride;"  Emerson's  "Concord  Hymn;"  Cooper's 
"Spy,"  Dr.  S.  W.  Mitchell's  "Hugh  Wynne;"  Winston  Churchill's 
"Richard  Carvel." 

Prose.  Compare  the  language  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
or  of  the  Federalist  papers  with  that  of  Paine's  "The  Crisis" 
("A.  P.,"  70)  or  of  Franklin's  "Autobiography."  Read  Washington's 
"Farewell  Address,"  paragraphs  1-14,  ("L.  A.  L.,"  III.,  162; 
"World's  Best  Orations,"  X.,  3740);  Jefferson's  "Letters,"  "L.  A. 
L.,"  III.,  274,  etc.  Also  Crevecoeur's  "Letters  from  an  American 
Farmer,"  Duyckinck,  L,  185;  "L.  A.  L.,"  III.,  138. 

Poetry,  Philip  Freneau.  Read  "The  Yankee's  Return  from  Camp" 
and  "The  Ballad  of  Nathan  Hale,"  Duyckinck,  L,  480,  "L.  A.  L.," 
III.,  338,  347;  Hopkinson's  "Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  Duyckinck,  L, 
228,  "L.  A.  L.,"  III.,  244;  Freneau's  "Eutaw  Springs,"  "The  WTild 
Honeysuckle,"  and  "To  a  Honey  Bee,"  Duyckinck,  I.,  355,  360, 
"L.  A.  L.,"  III.,  448,  453,  456. 

IV.  THE  NEW  ENVIRONMENT 

Charles  Brockdcn  Brown.  Read  Warner's  "Irving,"  chapter  i., 
"A.  M.  L.;"  also  the  article  on  Brown  in  the  "Encyc.  Britannica." 
There  is  a  life  of  Brown  by  Prescott  in  Sparks's  "American  Biog- 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          343 

raphy;"  also  a  memoir  prefixed  to  "Wieland"  (Brown's"  Works,** 
6  vols.,  Philadelphia),  and  an  essay  on  Brown  in  Prescott's  "Miscel 
lanies." 

Read  the  selections  in  "A.  P.,"  89-100  (or  "L.  A.  L.,"  Vol.  IV.), 
and  note  that  the  author,  in  spite  of  his  involved  way  of  thinking 
and  his  inflated  language,  has  yet  a  directness  and  even  swiftness  of 
manner  that  compels  attention  and  at  times  fascinates. 

Irving.  There  are  many  editions  of  Irving's  works.  One  of  the 
best  is  the  Geoffrey  Crayon  edition  in  27  volumes,  containing  the 
biography  by  Pierre  M.  Irving  in  3  volumes  (Putnam).  The 
"Knickerbocker  History"  may  be  had  in  Cassell's  National  Library, 
2  vols.  See  also  the  "Lake  English  Classics;"  Life,  by  C.  D.  Warner, 
in  "A.  M.  L."  Criticism:  Eulogy,  by  W.  C.  Bryant,  in  Bryant's 
"Prose  Works;"  "A  Fable  for  Critics,"  by  Lowell. 

Read  "Knickerbocker  History,"  Book  III.,  chapter  i.;  "Sketch- 
Book"- -"The  Author's  Account  of  Himself,"  "Rip  Van  Winkle," 
"The  Christmas  Dinner,"  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow;'* 
"  Alhambra"- -"  The  Court  of  Lions."  Illustrate,  from  Irving  and 
Franklin,  the  difference  between  humor  and  wit.  What  qualities  are 
seen  in  Irving  that  were  lacking  in  the  Puritans?  How  wide-em 
bracing  is  his  love  of  beauty?  What  directions  does  his  interest  in 
English  literature  take?  Does  his  style  seem  antiquated?  How  does 
the  ordinary  modern  novel  differ  from  one  of  Irving's  sketches? 

Collateral  reading:  Longfellow's  poem,  "In  the  Churchyard  at 
Tarrytown." 

Cooper.  Household  edition  of  Cooper's  works,  with  introductions 
by  Susan  F.  Cooper,  32  vols.  (Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co.)  "The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans"  ("Lake  English  Classics,"  Scott,  Foresman 
and  Co.)  Life,  by  T.  R.  Loundsbury,  in  "A.  M.  L."  "A  Glance 
Backward,"  by  Susan  F.  Cooper,  Atlantic  Monthly,  Feb.,  1887. 
"Chronicle  and  Comment,"  The  Bookman,  Oct.  1899. 

Read  "The  Pioneers,"  chapters  iii.  and  xxviii.;  "The  Deerslayer," 
chapter  xvi.;  "The  Pilot,"  chapters  i.  to  iv.;  or  better,  "The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans"  entire.  Compare  Cooper  with  Scott  and  determine 
from  your  own  point  of  view  whether  American  or  European  themes 
yield  the  greater  interest.  Estimate  the  relative  proportions  of 
description,  narration,  and  dialogue,  in  each  writer.  Find  examples  of 
Cooper's  moralizing.  Does  Cooper  mean  to  present  Natty  Bumppo 


344  APPENDIX 

as   an   ideal   character?     Test  for   yourself   the   charge   that    Cooper's 
style  is  hasty  and  faulty. 

Allston,  Drake,  Halleck,  Willis,  etc.  "Life  and  Letters  of  Halleck," 
by  James  G.  Wilson.  Life  of  Willis,  by  Beers,  in  "A.  M.  L." 

Most  of  the  poems  named  in  the  text  may  be  found  in  Duyckinck, 
"L.  A.  L.,"  "A.  A.,"  or  "L.  P.  S."  Read  Drake's  "Culprit  Fay." 
Do  you  find  anything  in  it  derived  from  the  poet's  observation — any 
thing  that  could  not  have  been  learned  from  other  poetry?  How 
does  it  compare  in  metre,  music,  and  imagery  with  Lowell's  "Vision 
of  Sir  Launfal?"  Do  you  find  in  any  of  Willis's  poetry  a  genuine 
love  of  nature? 

Collateral  reading:  Lowell's  "Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago" 
(Prose  Works,  Riverside  ed.,  Vol.  L,  72-76,  on  Allston) ;  Lowell's 
"Fable  for  Critics"  and  Poe's  "Literati"  (on  Halleck  and  Willis); 
Whittier's  poem,  "Fitz-Greene  Halleck." 

Bryant.  Bryant's  works  are  published  by  D.  Appleton  and  Co., 
of  New  York  (poems,  2  vols.,  prose,  2  vols.;  Household  edition  of 
poems,  1  vol.).  Life,  by  Parke  Godwin,  2  vols.;  by  Bigelow,  in  "A. 
M.  L."  "Bryant  and  his  Friends,"  by  James  G.  Wilson.  Criticism: 
Stedman's  "Poets  of  America;"  J.  Alden's  "Studies  in  Bryant,"  in 
Literature  Primer  Series;  Whipple's  "Literature  and  Life;"  Lowell's 
"Fable  for  Critics." 

Select  three  poems  in  blank  verse,  and  three  in  rhyme,  for  study. 
Contrast  "Thanatopsis"  with  the  opening  pages  of  Keats's  "Endy- 
mion,"  written  about  the  same  time.  Which  seems  the  more  youthful? 
Which  has  the  more  color  and  melody?  Which,  if  either,  is  the  more 
devout?  WThat  examples  do  you  find  in  the  former  of  conventional 
poetic  diction?  Does  Bryant's  poetry  in  general  show  clearly  the 
inspiration  of  a  new  land?  Is  it  equally  clear  that  the  new  land  is 
America  and  no  other?  Could  "Thanatopsis"  have  been  written  in 
Australia?  In  England?  In  London?  Trace  any  similarities  be 
tween  Bryant  and  Cooper.  Read  "My  Tribute  to  Four  Poets"  in 
Walt  Whitman's  "Specimen  Days." 

V.     ROMANCE 

Poe.  Stedman  and  Woodberry's  critical  edition  of  Poe's  works, 
10  vols.  Selections  from  "Poe's  Tales"  in  the  "Lake  English 
Classics";  Life,  by  G.  E.  Woodberry,  in  "A.  M.  L."  Criticism: 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          345 

Stedman's  "Poets  of  America;"  "Foe's    Place    in    American    Litera 
ture,"  by  H.  W.  Mabie,  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  Dec.,  1899. 

Read  "The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,"  "Ligeia,"  "The  Masque 
of  the  Red  Death,"  "The  Gold-Bug,"  and  "A  Descent  into  the 
Maelstrom;"  also  the  important  poems  as  indicated  in  the  text.  Can 
a  moral  purpose  be  detected  in  any  of  these  tales?  What  is  their 
source  of  interest?  Is  conversation  much  used,  or  naturally  used? 
Is  any  character  or  any  act  viewed  in  the  light  of  right  or  wrong? 
Compare  Poe  with  Cooper  in  this  respect.  Select  a  passage  particu 
larly  beautiful  for  the  scene  described  or  for  the  language  used.  Com 
pare  the  metre  of  "The  Raven"  with  that  of  Mrs.  Browning's 
"Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship"  (1844)  and  Tennyson's  "Locksley 
Hall"  (1842) — (read  Poe's  essay,  "The  Philosophy  of  Composition"). 
What  other  American  poet  employed  refrains  effectively?  In  what 
other  familiar  .poem  is  a  trochaic  measure  used?  Find  among  Poe's 
poetry  a  light-hearted  poem;  a  poem  without  the  first  personal  pro 
noun.  Find  a  line  that  can  be  aptly  quoted  apart  from  its  context. 

Collateral  reading:  "Poe's  Cottage  at  Fordham,"  by  J.  H.  Boner, 
and  Sonnets  by  Sarah  Helen  Whitman,  in  "A.  A." 

From  South  to  North.  "Life  of  Simms,"  by  W.  P.  Trent,  in  "A 
M.  L."  (see  also  "Southern  Literature,"  by  Louise  Manly).  "Life 
of  R.  H.  Dana,  Jr.,"  by  C.  F.  Adams. 

Read  "Two  Years  Before  the  Mast"  (or  at  least  chapters  iv.,  v., 
xiii.,  xiv.).  Selections  also  from  Simms,  Melville,  and  Judd  may 
be  read;  they  can  be  found  in  Duyckinck  or  "L.  A.  L." 

Hawthorne.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  13  vols.  Separate  volumes 
and  selections  in  convenient  form  in  the  "Lake  English  Classics," 
"Riverside  Literature  Series,"  etc.  Life,  by  James,  in  "A.  M. 
L.;"  by  Conway,  in  "G.  W.  S.;"  by  Annie  Fields,  in  "Beacon  Biog 
raphies."  "Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife,"  by  Julian 
Hawthorne.  "Memories  of  Hawthorne,"  by  Rose  Hawthorne 
Lathrop.  Criticism:  "Yesterdays  with  Authors,"  J.  T.  Fields; 
"Essays  Theological  and  Literary,"  R.  H.  Hutton;  "A  Study  of 
Hawthorne,"  G.  P.  Lathrop;"  "The  New  England  Poets,"  W.  C. 
Lawton. 

Read  "The  Snow  Image"  (and  the  preface  to  that  volume).  Read 
"Ethan  Brand,"  and  trace  some  of  the  sources  of  the  tale  in  the 
"American  Note-Books"  for  1838,  July  26  to  September  7.  Read 


346  APPENDIX 

"The  Old  Manse."  From  what  does  "The  Celestial  Railroad" 
derive  its  form?  What  in  the  religious  tendency  of  the  times  in 
spired  Hawthorne  to  write  it?  Is  it  seriously  meant?  Find  other 
allegories  in  Hawthorne.  What  are  the  best  characters  in  "The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables"?  What  is  the  climax  of  that  story? 
Read  "The  Custom  House"  (introduction  to  "The  Scarlet  Letter"). 
Was  Hawthorne's  experience  of  life  either  broader  or  deeper  than 
Poe's?  Did  he  turn  it  to  better  account  in  his  work? 

Collateral  reading:  Longfellow's  poem,  "Hawthorne;"  Alcott's 
sonnet,  "Hawthorne,"  in  "A.  A." 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.     Life,  by  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields. 
Read  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  in  part  or  entire.     In  what  ways  did 
the  institution  of  slave-holding  hinder  or  help  literature. 

VI.     THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MOVEMENT 

Religion  and  Philosophy  in  New  England.  Read  Wendell,  Book  V., 
Chapters  iv.  and  v.  References:  "Our  Liberal  Movement  in  The 
ology,"  by  J.  H.  Allen.  "Life  of  Dr.  Channing,"  by  W.  H.Channing. 
"Transcendentalism  in  New  England,"  by  O.  B.  Frothingham.  Essays 
on  "Transcendentalism"  by  E.  Dowden  ("Studies  in  Literature")  and 
R.  W.  Emerson  ("Nature,  Addresses,  and  Lectures").  Frothingham's 
"Life  of  Ripley,"  in  "A.  M.  L."  "Brook  Farm,"  by  Lindsay  Swift 
(National  Studies  in  American  Letters).  "Brook  Farm,"  by  J.  T. 
Codman.  "Life  of  Margaret  Fuller,"  by  T.  W.  Higginson,  in  "A. 
M.  L."  "Memoirs  of  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli,"  by  Emerson  and 
others. 

On  Margaret  Fuller  ("  Miranda")  and  Alcott,  see  Lowell's  "Fable  for 
Critics."  Read  the  first  part  of  Lowell's  essay  on  "Thoreau." 
Poems  of  Channing,  Very,  and  Cranch  may  be  found  in  "L.  A.  L.," 
"A.  A.,"  and  "L.  P.  S."  Very's  complete  "Poems"  have  been 
edited  by  J.  F.  Clarke.  Collateral  reading:  Hawthorne's  "Blithe- 
dale  Romance;"  Emerson's  Address  on  "Theodore  Parker;"  Whit- 
tier's  poem  on  "Channing;"  Lowell's  "Elegy  on  the  Death  of  Dr. 
Channing;"  Alcott's  sonnets  on  "Channing"  and  "Margaret  Ful 
ler"  (in  "A.  A."). 

Emerson.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  12  vols.  "A  Memoir  of 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,"  by  J.  E.  Cabot.  "Emerson  in  Concord," 
by  E.  W.  Emerson.  "Ralph  WTaldo  Emerson:  His  Life,  Writings, 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          347 

and  Philosophy,"  by  G.  W.  Cooke.  Biography  of  Emerson,  by 
O.  W.  Holmes,  in  "A.  M.  L.;"  by  Richard  Garnett,  in  "G.  W. 
S."  Essays  by  Matthew  Arnold  ("Discourses  in  America"),  J.  J. 
Chapman  ("Emerson,  and  Other  Essays"),  E.  C.  Stedman  ("Poets 
of  America"). 

The  best  essays  of  Emerson  to  begin  with  are  "The  American 
Scholar,"  "Self-Reliance,"  "Compensation,"  and  some  of  the  simpler 
essays  like  "Manners"  and  "Gifts."  For  the  poetry,  begin  with 
the  poems  of  nature — "May-Day,"  "Woodnotes,"  "The  Titmouse," 
etc.  Are  the  truths  in  "The  American  Scholar"  applicable  to  all 
scholars?  Why  are  they  .addressed  to  American  scholars?  Do  Amer 
icans  particularly  need  encouragement  to  self-reliance?  Distinguish 
between  self-reliance  and  self-assurance.  Is  the  doctrine  of  compen 
sation  likely  to  make  men  inactive  and  indifferent  to  success  or  prog 
ress?  What  do  you  understand  by  the  Over-Soul?  Do  you  judge 
Emerson's  reading  to  have  been  wide?  What  writers  does  he  refer 
to  most  frequently?  Compare  his  list  of  Representative  Men  with 
Carlyle's  Heroes  ("Heroes  and  Hero  Worship").  Compare  one  of 
his  paragraphs  with  one  of  Bacon's,  and  note  similarities  and  differ 
ences  of  style.  Commit  to  memory  several  of  his  aphorisms.  Com 
pare  his  "Threnody"  with  Pierpont's  "My  Child"  ("A.  A."). 
What  truths  do  you  find  in  "Each  and  All"?  What  is  the  central 
truth?  What  qualities  appear  in  Emerson's  poetry  that  were  not  in 
Bryant's? 

Collateral  reading:  "Correspondence  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson;" 
Lowell's  essay,  "Emerson  the  Lecturer;"  "Homes  and  Haunts  of 
Emerson,"  by  Sanborn,  in  Scribners,  Feb.,  1879;  "Birds  and  Poets," 
by  John  Burroughs;  "The  Great  Stone  Face,"  by  Hawthorne 
("Twice  Told  Tales");  "A  Visit  to  R.  W.  Emerson,"  and  "By 
Emerson's  Grave,"  in  Walt  Whitman's  "Specimen  Days." 

Thoreau.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  11  vols.  Life,  by  F.  B.  San- 
born,  in  "A.  M.  L."  "Familiar  Letters  of  Thoreau,"  edited  by  F. 
B.  Sanborn.  "Thoreau,  the  Poet-Naturalist,"  by  William  Ellery 
Channing.  "Thoreau,  His  Life  and  Aims,"  by  H.  A.  Page.  Essays 
on  Thoreau  by  Emerson  ("Lectures  and  Biographical  Sketches"), 
Lowell  ("Among  My  Books"),  T.  W.  Higginson  ("Short  Studies  of 
American  Authors"),  John  Burroughs  ("Indoor  Studies"),  R.  L. 
Stevenson  ("Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books"). 

Read  W  olden,  chapters  on  "Economy"  and  "Sounds."     A  variety 


348  APPENDIX 

of  selections  may  be  found  in  "A.  P."  What  traits  of  the  Puritan 
do  you  find  in  Thoreau?  Discuss  Stevenson's  statement  that  "  Thoreau 
was  a  skulker."  Discuss  Burroughs's  declaration  that  Thoreau's 
humpr  "had  worked  a  little — was  not  quite  sweet."  What  of  his 
resourcefulness?  His  acuteness  and  accuracy  as  an  observer?  His 
acuteness  and  soundness  as  a  reasoner?  Why  is  he  more  widely 
read  today  than  he  was  fifty  years  ago? 

Collateral  reading:  Miss  Alcott's  poem,  "Thoreau's  Flute,"  and 
Channing's  "Tears  in  Spring,"  in  "A.  A."  (The  description  of  the 
"forest  seer"  in  Emerson's  "Woodnotes"  fits  Thoreau  admirably, 
but  it  was  written  before  Emerson  knew  Thoreau  and  therefore 
could  not  have  been  intended,  as  commonly  supposed,  to  describe 
him.) 

VII.     NATIONAL  LIFE  AND  CULTURE 

Oratory.  "Life  of  Webster,"  by  G.  T.  Curtis.  Lives  of  Webster, 
Clay,  Lincoln,  etc.,  in  the  "American  Statesmen  Series."  Specimen 
orations  in  F.  Moore's  "American  Eloquence,"  2  vols.;  D.  J. 
Brewer's  "The  World's  Best  Orations,"  10  vols.  Criticism:  Whip- 
pie's  "Character  and  Characteristic  Men;"  Emerson's  "Life  and 
Letters  in  New  England;"  Wendell's  "Literary  History  of  America." 

Read  the  first  three  extracts  from  Webster's  speeches  and  the  three 
addresses  of  Lincoln  in  "A.  P.,"  comparing  them  carefully  in  matter 
and  style. 

Collateral  reading:  Higginson's  "Cheerful  Yesterdays;"  Choate's 
"Eulogy  on  Webster;"  Hawthorne's  "Great  Stone  Face"  ("Old 
Stony  Phiz");  Whittier's  "Ichabod,"  "The  Lost  Occasion,"  and 
"Summer;"  Longfellow's  "Charles  Sumner,"  and  "Three  Friends  of 
Mine"  (Felton,  Agassiz,  and  Sumner);  Lowell's  sonnet  on  "Wendell 
Phillips;"  Alcott's  sonnet  on  the  same  (in  "A.  A."). 

History  and  Criticism.  "  Life  of  Prescott,"  by  Geo.  Ticknor.  "  Mem 
oir  of  Motley,"  by  O.  W.  Holmes.  "Motley's  Correspondence,"  ed 
ited  by  G.  W.  Curtis.  "Life  of  Parkman,"  by  C.  H.  Farnham.  The 
last  named  is  of  especial  value.  Criticism:  Whipple's  "Essays  and 
Reviews"  and  "Recollections  of  Eminent  Men;"  Jameson's  "His 
tory  of  Historical  Writing  in  America." 

Read  Parkman's  "California  and  Oregon  Trail,"  chapters  xiv.-xvii.; 
or  the  selections  from  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman  in  "A.  P." 
Collateral  reading:  Mrs.  Catherwood's  romances. 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND   STUDY          3-13 

Longfellow.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  11  vols.  Cambridge  edition 
of  poems,  with  notes,  1  vol.  Life,  by  Samuel  Longfellow,  3  vols;  by 
Robertson,  in  "G.  W.  S."  Criticism:  "Longfellow,"  by  G.  W.  Cur 
tis,  Harper  s  Magazine,  June,  1882;  "The  Art  of  Longfellow,"  by  H 
E.  Scudder,  "Men  and  Letters;"  Stedman's  "Poets  of  America." 

Special  reading  in  Longfellow  scarcely  needs  to  be  indicated;  select 
ed  poems  may  be  found  in  the  "Riverside  Literature  Series"  and 
elsewhere.  Poems  contributing  to  his  own  biography  are:  "Footsteps 
of  Angels,"  "The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,"  "To  the  River  Charles," 
"The  Two  Angels,"  "My  Lost  Youth,"  "The  Children's  Hour," 
"Three  Friends  of  Mine,"  "Morituri  Salutamus,"  Arrange  Long 
fellow's  important  poems  under  three  heads:  dramatic,  narrative, 
and  lyric.  How  wide  is  the  scope  of  the  lyric  poems?  Could  any 
be  readily  set  to  music  ?(  Find  a  poem  of  nature  with  no  moral 
in  it;  a  poem  of  human  life  with  no  touch  of  outdoor  nature  in 
it;  a  sad  poem;  a  poem  for  scholars;  an  allegory.  What  is  dac 
tylic  hexameter  verse?  What  is  a  sonnet?  Does  Longfellow  reflect 
clearly  his  New  England  environment?  How  does  his  Americanism 
compare  with  Irving's?  WTith  Bryant's?  With  Emerson's?  In  what 
respects  is  he  superior,  and  in  what  inferior,  to  Bryant  and  to  Poe? 

In  connection  with  "Evangeline,"  read  Hawthorne's  "Grand 
father's  Chair,"  II.,  viii.  Read  the  "Death  of  Longfellow,"  in  Walt 
Whitman's  "Specimen  Days." 

Whittier.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  7  vols.  Cambridge  edition  of 
poems,  with  notes,  1  vol.  Life  and  Letters,  by  S.  T.  Pickard,  2  vols. 
Biography,  by  F.  H.  Underwood.  Criticism:  George  Woodberry,  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  November,  1892;  "Stelligeri,"  by  Barrett  Wen 
dell;  Stedman's  "Poets  of  America;"  Lowell's  "Fable  for  Critics." 

Select  for  study  one  of  Whittier's  best  narrative  poems  or  ballads, 
one  poem  on  freedom,  one  on  nature,  and  one  religious.  Contrast, 
as  idyls,  "Snow-Bound"  and  "Evangeline"  (noting  construction, 
spontaneity,  truth  of  delineation,  etc.).  Compare  "The  Tent  on  the 
Beach"  with  Longfellow's  "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn."  What  New 
England  poet  does  Whittier  most  resemble  in  simplicity  of  thought? 
What  one  in  simplicity  of  form?  On  what  ground,  if  any,  could  he 
be  called  the  national  poet  of  America?  What  serious  objections  are 
there  to  this  use  of  the  title?  In  what  vital  point  does  the  resem 
blance  between  Whittier  and  Burns  fail? 

Collateral    reading:      Poems    by     Holmes    and    Elizabeth    Stuart 


350  APPENDIX 

Phelps  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  November,  1892;  Longfellow's  "The 
Three  Silences  of  Molinos;"  Holmes's  two  poems  "On  Whittier's 
Birthday;"  the  dedication  of  Bayard  Taylor's  "Lars." 

Lowell.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  12  vols.  Cambridge  edition  of 
poems,  1  vol.  Selections  in  "Lake  English  Classics,"  Riverside 
Literature  Series,  "A.  P.,"  etc.  Biographical  sketch,  by  F.  H. 
Underwood  (a  full  biography  is  in  preparation  by  H.  E.  Scudder). 
"Letters,"  edited  by  C.  E.  Norton,  2  vols.  Criticism:  Stedman's 
"Poets  of  America;"  William  W'atson's  "Excursions  in  Criticism" 
("Lowell  as  a  Critic");  Whipple's  "Outlooks  on  Society." 

Read  the  following  poems:  "Sir  Launfal,"  "She  Came  and 
Went,"  "To  the  Dandelion,"  "Under  the  Willows,"  "The  Present 
Crisis,"  parts  of  the  "Biglow  Papers,"  and  "Commemoration  Ode." 
Of  the  prose,  read:  "My  Garden  Acquaintance"  and  "On  a  Certain 
Condescension  in  Foreigners"  (the  critical  prose  and  "Democracy" 
are  better  postponed).  Compare  "The  Courtin'"  with  Fessenden's 
"Country  Courtship"  in  Duyckinck.  Compare  "After  the  Burial" 
with  Emerson's  "Threnody."  Point  out  unevenness  of  execution 
in  "The  Commemoration  Ode."  What  is  an  ode?  Compare  with 
the  odes  of  the  English  Cowley.  Read  a  page  of  Lowell's  prose  three 
or  four  times  and  see  if  you  cannot  discover  something  ne\y — a  refer 
ence,  an  idea,  a  twist  of  thought  or  phrase, — each  time.  Can  Lowell 
be  called  a  lover  of  the  media? val,  like  Irving  and  Longfellow?  Do 
his  European  culture  and  his  American  common  sense  mix  well? 
(Compare  Emerson.)  Trace  the  compliments  to  Lowell  in  Holmes's 
poem,  "To  James  Russell  Lowell."  Discuss  the  justice  of  the  estimate 
in  Whittier's  lines,  "James  Russell  Lowell." 

Collateral  reading:  "James  Russell  Lowell  and  His  Friends,"  by  E. 
E.  Hale;  "A  Personal  Retrospect,"  by  W.  D.  Howells,  Scribner's  Mag 
azine,  September,  1900;  Longfellow's  "The  Herons  of  Elmwood." 

Holmes.  Works,  Riverside  edition,  13  vols.  Cambridge  edition  of 
poems,  1  vol.  Selections  in  Modern  Classics,  Riverside  Literature 
Series,  etc.  Life  and  Letters,  by  John  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  2  vols.  Criti 
cism:  Stedman's  "Poets  of  America;"  Curtis's  "Literary  and  Social 
Essays;"  Haweis's  "American  Humorists;"  Lawton's  "Poets  of  New 
England." 

Read  "The  Last  Leaf,"  "Dorothy  Q.,"  "The  Deacon's  Master 
piece,"  and  "The  Chambered  Nautilus."  Read  the  introduction  to 
the  collected  poems,  "To  my  Readers."  Does  Holmes's  sentiment 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          351 

often  take  on  a  melancholy  cast?  Does  it  ever  degenerate  into  senti- 
mentalism?  Is  he  a  conservative,  or  a  radical,  in  thought?  In  form, 
which  is  he?  Read  the  following  autobiographical  passages:  "The 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table,"  pp.  10-32  (Riverside  ed.);  "A  Mortal 
Antipathy,"  pp.  1-32;"  Pages  from  an  Old  Volume  of  Life,"  pp.  239-259; 
Introductions  to  "The  Autocrat"  and  "Over  the  Tea-Cups."  Is  "The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table"  well  named?  Does  it  contain  any 
real  conversation?  In  which  does  the  humor  most  approach  wit, 
Lamb  or  Holmes?  Whose  humor  is  of  the  higher  order,  Lowell's 
or  Holmes's?  Which  personality  is  the  more  pleasing? 

Collateral  reading:  "Old  Cambridge,"  by  T.  W.  Higginson; 
"James  Russell  Lowell  and  His  Friends,"  by  E.  E.  Hale.  Specimens 
of  English  "society  verse"  may  be  found  in  Locker-Lampson's  "Lyra 
Elegantiarum." 

Minor  Poetry  and  Miscellaneous  Prose.  Hale's  works,  Library 
edition,  10  vols.  Higginson's  works,  Riverside  edition,  7  vols. 
Taylor's  Poems,  1  vol.,  Dramatic  Works,  1  vol.  (Houghton,  Mifflin 
and  Co.);  Novels  and  Travels,  16  vols.  (Putnam).  "Life  and  Letters 
of  Bayard  Taylor,"  by  Marie  Hansen-Taylor  and  H.  E.  Scudder,  2 
vols.  "Life  of  Taylor,"  by  Smyth,  in  "A.  M.  L."  Criticism: 
Stedman's  "Poets  of  America."  "Life  of  Curtis,"  by  Gary,  in  "A. 
M.  L."  Curtis's  "Orations  and  Addresses,"  ed.  by  C.  E.  Norton. 

Read  Read's  "Drifting;"  Boker's  "Dirge  for  a  Soldier;"  Taylor's 
"Bedouin  Song;"  Holland's  "Babyhood"  (all  in  "L.  P.  S."  and  "A. 
A.").  Compare  "The  Voyage"  (chapter  i.)  in  Taylor's  "Views 
Afoot"  with  "The  Voyage"  in  Irving's  "Sketch-Book."  Read  the 
selections  in  "A.  P."  from  Curtis's  "Duty  of  the  American  Scholar." 
Collateral  reading:  Longfellow's  poem,  "Bayard  Taylor;"  Sidney 
Lanier's  poem,  "To  Bayard  Taylor." 

Walt  Whitman.  "Leaves  of  Grass"  (poems  complete),  1  vol. 
"Prose  Works,"  1  vol.  "Selections  from  the  Poems  of  Walt  Whit 
man,"  by  Arthur  Stedman.  (All  published  by  David  McKay,  Phila 
delphia.)  Biography  and  Criticism:  "Life,"  by  WTilliam  Clarke 
(London);  by  R.  M.  Burke.  "Whitman:  A  Study,"  by  John  Bur 
roughs.  "Walt  Whitman  the  Man,"  by  Thomas  Donaldson. 
Essays  by  J.  A.  Symonds,  in  "Essays  Speculative  and  Sugges 
tive,"  and  Edward  Dowden,  in  "Studies  in  Literature." 

In  "Specimen  Days,"  read  "Paumanok,"  "Printing  Office," 
"Broadway  Sights,"  "Opening  of  the  Secession  War,"  "Battle  of 


352  APPENDIX 

Bull  Run"  (compare  Irving  Bacheller's  "Eben  Holden,"  chap,  xxxix.), 
"The  Oaks  and  I,"  "Nature  and  Democracy."  What  other  American 
writers  never  married  and  never  went  abroad?  Has  the  latter  fact 
affected  their  "Americanism"?  Read  "Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry," 
"Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking,"  "Beat!  Beat!  Drums!" 
"When  Lilacs  Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloom' d,"  "O  Captain,  My  Cap 
tain,"  "Whispers  of  Heavenly  Death,"  "The  Mystic  Trumpeter," 
"Joy,  Shipmate,  Joy."  Compare  "The  First  Dandelion"  with 
Lowell's  "To  the  Dandelion."  Which  poem  says  most  or  suggests 
most?  Which  is  the  more  natural,  simple,  spontaneous?  For 
imagination  and  lyric  rapture,  compare  "To  the  Man-of- War-Bird" 
with  Bryant's  "To  a  Waterfowl"  and  Shelley's  "Skylark."  Com 
pare  "When  I  Heard  the  Learn'd  Astronomer"  with  Clough's  "In  a 
Lecture  Room."  Find,  in  Whitman's  poems,  metrical  lines,  espec 
ially  dactylic  hexameters.  Is  his  "Spirit  That  Formed  This  Scene" 
a  satisfactory  answer  to  the  charge  that  his  poems  lack  art?  Can 
Whitman  be  said  to  be  preaching  the  same  fundamental  doctrine  as 
Emerson? 

VIII.     POETRY  IN  THE  SOUTH 

Read  Richardson,  Vol.  I.,  58-60;  Wendell,  VI.  iii. 

Hayne's  Complete  Poems,  with  life,  1882.  Timrod's  Poems,  Memo 
rial  edition,  1899.  Lanier's  Poems,  with  memorial  by  William  Hayes 
Ward,  1892.  "Select  Poems  of  Sidney  Lanier,"  by  Morgan  Callaway. 
"Selections  from  the  Southern  Poets,"  by  W.  L.  Weber,  Macmillan's 
Pocket  English  Classics.  "Bugle  Echoes,"  ed.  by  F.  F.  Browne,  1886. 
"Southern  Literature,"  by  Louise  Manly.  "Pioneers  of  Southern 
Literature"  (Ticknor,  Timrod,  Hayne),  by  S.  A.  Link.  Stedman's 
"Poets  of  America." 

Read  the  poems  indicated  in  the  text,  or  the  selections  to  be  found 
in  "L.  P.  S."  or  "A.  A."  In  particular,  Lanier's  "Hymns  of  the 
Marshes/'  "Corn,"  and  "The  Symphony"  should  be  read.  See  also 
"June  Dreams  in  January."  Compare  Lanier's  "Song  of  the  Chat- 
tahoochee"  with  Tennyson's  The  "Brook."  Study  the  landscape  and 
music  effects  in  "The  Marshes  of  Glynn."  What  is  the  faith  formu 
lated  in  "Acknowledgment"? 

IX.     PROSE  AND  POETRY  IN  THE  WEST 

For  selections,  see  "L.  A.  L."  and  "A.  A."  Biographical  and 
critical  helps  to  the  study  of  living  writers  are  necessarily  scant.  A 


SUGGESTIONS   FOR   READING   AND    STUDY          353 

variety  of  articles,  though  little  that  is  final,  may  be  found  in  the 
files  of  magazines  through  Poole's  Index.  A  few  of  the  letters  of  E. 
R.  Sill  have  been  published  in  the  volume  of  his  prose.  See  "The 
Literary  Emancipation  of  the  West,"  The  Forum,  XVI.,  156;  also 
"Mississippi  Valley  Literature,"  in  Walt  Whitman's  "Specimen 
Days;"  "The  Hoosiers,"  by  M.  Nicholson,  in  "National  Studies  in 
American  Letters." 

Suggestions  for  discussion:  The  humor  of  Bret  Harte;  the  serious 
ness  of  Mark  Twain;  Huckleberry  Finn's  ideas  of  honor.  How  far 
does  romantic  idealism,  as  found  in  "Ramona,"  enter  into  Harte' s 
stories?  Does  it  enter  into  Mark  Twain's  at  all?  Discuss  Eugene 
Field  as  a  poet  of  childhood  and  as  a  poet  for  children. 

X.     POETRY  AND  CRITICISM  IN  THE  EAST 

For  selections,  see  "L.  A.  L."  and  "A.  A."  The  letters  of  Emily 
Dickinson  have  been  published,  and  they  are  quite  as  original  and 
suggestive  as  her  poems.  Mr.  Stedman's  critical  work  should  be 
already  familiar.  The  introduction  to  his  "American  Anthology" 
may  be  profitably  read  in  this  connection. 

Suggestions  for  discussion:  The  American  boy  in  literature  (see 
Aldrich,  Twain,  Warner,  Howells);  the  best  books  for  children  (Miss 
Alcott,  Mrs.  Burnett,  Jacob  Abbott,  etc.).  Consider  late  writers  upon 
outdoor  subjects  and  the  varying  degree  of  human  interest  in  their 
writings.  Has  New  York  overtaken  New  England  in  literary  pro 
ductivity?  (Consider  writers,  magazines,  publishing  houses,  univer 
sities,  libraries,  etc.)  May  differences  in  the  quality  of  product  still 
be  observed?  Has  journalism  worked  to  the  detriment  of  scholar 
ship? 

XI.     LATE  MOVEMENTS  IN  FICTION 

For  selections  from  the  elder  writers,  see  "L.  A.  L."  Consult 
W.  D.  Howell's  "Criticism  and  Fiction,"  Marion  Crawford's  "The 
Novel:  What  It  Is,"  and  Hamlin  Garland's  "Crumbling  Idols;"  also 
"Two  Principles  in  Recent  American  Fiction,"  by  James  Lane 
Allen,  Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1897. 

The  short  stories  of  Bret  Harte  may  be  contrasted  with  Poe's  tales, 
or  the  stories  of  Miss  Wilkins  with  Hawthorne's  tales,  to  bring  out 
the  difference  between  the  romantic  and  the  realistic  methods.  An 
attempt  might  profitably  be  made  to  classify  the  most  popular  novels 


354  APPENDIX 

of  the  last  few  years  according  as  they  are  realistic  or  romantic  in 
their  tendency;  according  as  they  are  delineations  of  past  life  (his 
torical),  of  present  life  (realistic  again,  or  "local"),  or  of  purely  im 
aginary  scenes;  and  according  as  they  are  novels  of  plot  and  incident 
(in  the  short  story,  situation),  novels  of  character,  or  novels  of  pur 
pose,  (moral,  didactic,  "problem"  novels).  This  will  at  least  serve 
to  bring  out  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  present  activities  in  the 
field  of  fiction.  Further  discussion  might  turn  upon  the  best  short 
stories,  the  long  novels  most  likely  to  live,  and  the  characters  in 
American  fiction  that  are  sufficiently  well  known  to  permit  of  refer 
ence  to  them  without  explanation. 


INDEX 


NOTE — The  number  of  the  page  on  which  the  author  or  subject  is  especially  treated 
is  in  each  case  given  first;  passing  references  follow.  Names  of  American  authors  are 
printed  in  small  capitals.  Names  of  foreign  authors  are  printed  in  ordinary  lower  case, 
and  have  dates  attached.  British  authors  are  distinguished  from  other  foreign  authors  by 
the  addition  of  first  names.  All  titles  are  printed  in  italics.  Only  the  more  important 
titles  are  indexed. 


ABBOTT,  JACOB  F.,  147. 
ABBOTT,  JOHN  S.  C.,  188,  192. 
ADAMS,    CHARLES    FRANCIS,    JR., 

323,  328,  307. 
ADAMS,  HENRY,  323,  307. 
ADAMS,  JOHN,  40. 
Addison,  Joseph  (1672-1719),  17, 

36,  77. 

Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer,  277. 
^schylus  (B.  c.  525-456),  254. 
AGASSIZ,  JEAN  Louis  (ag'a  see), 

136,  163,  178,  193,  240. 
ALCOTT,  AMOS  BRONSON  (awl'cut), 

156,  135,  154,  155,  171. 
ALCOTT,  LOUISA  M.,  318. 
ALDRICH,  THOMAS  BAILEY   (awl'- 

drich),   288-290,   240,   252,  291, 

297,  298. 

Alhambra,  The,  70,  71,  73. 
ALLEN,  JAMES  LANE,  305. 
ALLSTON,  WASHINGTON,  94,  97, 

243. 

America,  232,  243. 
American  Flag,  The,  95. 
American  Scholar,    The,   161,  217. 
Among   My   Books,   223,   227-229. 
Among  the  Hills,  215. 
Arabian  Nights,  354. 
Ariosto  (1474-1533),  141. 
Arnold,  Matthew(1822-1888),  124, 

211,  212,  230. 
Arsenal  at  Springfield,  201. 
Arthur  Mervyn,  57,  59. 
Atlantic    Monthly,    221,    214,    222 

232-234,  249,  289,  298. 
AUSTIN,  JAXE,  G.,  318. 
Autobiography  of  Benjamin  Frank 
lin,  35,  30,  32,  104. 


Autocrat    of   the    Breakfast    Table, 
234-237,  241. 

BABBITT,  IRVING,  327. 

Backlog  Studies,  251. 

Bacon,    Francis    (1561-1626),    17, 

126,  165,  180. 

Balzac  (1799-1850),  87,  90,  145. 
BANCROFT,  GEORGE,  188,  134,  154. 
BANCROFT,  HUBERT  PI.,  323. 
Barclay  of  Ury,  209,  210. 
BARLOW,  JOEL,  44,  45. 
Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic,  243. 
Battle  of  the  Kegs,  44. 
Bay  Psalm  Book,  18,  22. 
BEECHER,  HENRY  WARD,  151,  163, 

187. 

Ben  Bolt,  249. 

Bible,  The,  101,  205,  258,  25. 
BIERCE,  AMBROSE,  321. 
Biglow  Papers,  218,  219,  222,  227. 
BIRD,  ROBERT  M.,  127. 
Bismarck  (1815-1893),  182. 
Bitter-Sweet,  250. 
Black  Cat,  The,  121. 
Blair,  Robert  (1699-1746),  102. 
Blithedale  Romance,  134,  135,  139. 
Boccaccio  (1313-1375),  60. 
BOKER,  GEORGE  HENRY,  245,  246, 

247,  248,  291. 
Bossuet  (1627-1704),  182. 
Boston  News  Letter,  19. 
BOYESEN,  H.  H.,  317. 
Bracebridge  Hall,  70. 
BRADFORD,  WILLIAM,  22. 
BRADSTREET,  ANNE,  23,  231. 
Bronte,Charlotte(1816-1855),  296. 
BROOKS,  MARIA  7GowEN,  99,  111. 


355 


356 


INDEX 


BROOKS,  PHILLIPS,  187. 

BROWNE,  ALICE,  319. 

BROWN,  CHARLES  BROCKDEN,  55- 

61,  53,  54,  77,  78,  111,  126,  141, 

142,  264,  295. 
BROWNE,  CHARLES  FARRAR,  327, 

278. 

BROWNELL,  W.  C.,  326. 
Browning,  Mrs.  E.  B.  (1806-1861), 

99. 

Browning,  Robert  (1812-1889),  106. 
BRYANT,   WILLIAM  CULLEN,   100- 

110,  54,  55,  84,  87,  94,  97,  98, 

192,  201,  203,  204,  214,  221,  225, 

231,  234,  239,  242,  245,  247-249, 

251,  254. 

Buccaneers,  The,  97,  129. 
Building  of  the  Ship,  198,  202. 
Bulwer,    Edward    (Lord    Lytton, 

1803-1873),  118,  296. 
BUNNER,  HENRY  C.,  313. 
Bunyan,  John  (1628-1688),  33,  231. 
Burke,  Edmund  (1729-1797),  40, 

41,  182. 

BURNETT,  FRANCES  HODGSON,  320. 
Burns,    Robert    (1759-1796),    97, 

196,206,211,212,214,226. 
Burns,  211. 
BURROUGHS,  JOHN,  291,  293,  252, 

309. 

BUSHNELL,  HORACE,   151,   187V 
BUTLER,  NICHOLAS  M.,  308. 
Butler,  Samuel  (1612-1680),  43. 
Byron,  Lord  (1788-1824),  70,  71, 

97,  113,  207. 

CABLE,  GEORGE  W.,  304,  305. 

CALHOUN,  JOHN  C.,  184-5. 

California  and  Oregon   Trail,  190. 

Campbell,  Thomas  (1777-1844), 
47,  97. 

CAMPBELL,  WILLIAM  W.,  316,  308. 

CARLETON,  WILL,  315. 

Carlyle,  Thomas  (1795-1881), 
152,  159,  163,  165,  170,  182, 
214,  223,  227,  229,  230,  256,  263. 

CARMAN,  BLISS,  316,  293,  308. 

Carolina,  272. 

CARPENTER,  G.  R.,  337 

CARY,  ALICE,  248. 

GARY,  PHCEBE,  248. 


Cathedral,  The,  226. 
CATHERWOOD,  MARY  H.,  321,  306. 
CAWEIN,  MADISON,  315. 
Century,  The,  250,  293. 
Cervantes  (1547-1616),  141. 
Chambered  Nautilus,  The,  236,  240. 
CHAMBERS,  ROBERT  W.,  318. 
CHANNING,  DR.  WILLIAM  ELLERY, 

151,  154,  187. 
CHANNING,  WILLIAM  ELLERY,  156, 

154,  172,  174. 
CHANNING,  WILLIAM  HENRY,  154, 

155. 

CHAPMAN,  JOHN,  J.,  327. 
Charlotte  Temple,  56. 
Chateaubriand  (1768-1848),  18,87. 
Chaucer,   Geoffrey   (?   1340-1400), 

64,  201,  203,  223. 
CHENEY,  JOHN  VANCE,  315. 
CHILD,  FRANCIS  J.,  308. 
CHIVERS.  THOMAS  HOLLY,  117. 
CHOATE,  RUFUS,  185. 
Choir  Invisible,  The,  305. 
CHURCHILL,  WINSTON,  320. 
Cicero  (B.  c.  106-43),  40,  182. 
CLARKE,    JAMES    FREEMAN,    151, 

154,  231. 

CLAY,  HENRY,  184,  207,  210,  254. 
CLEMENS,  SAMUEL  L.,  277-279,  90, 

280,  284,  297,  305. 
CLIFTON,  WTILLIAM,  49. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  T.  (1772-1834), 

94,  96,  97.  126, 141. 152, 159,  226. 
Collins,    Wrilkie    (1824-1889),    119. 
Columbiad,  The,  45. 
Commemoration  Ode,  223,  227,  239, 

286. 

Common  Sense,  41,  42. 
Concord  Hymn,  158,  239. 
Condensed  Novels,  279. 
Confucius  (B.  c.  550-478),  169. 
Conquest  of  Granada,  70,  71. 
CONWAY,  MONCURE  D.,  324. 
COOKE,  JOHN  ESTEN,  319,  303. 
COOKE,  ROSE  TERRY,  318. 
COOLBRITH,  INA  D.,  316. 
COOPER,  JAMES  FENIMORE,  77-93, 

54,  60,  61,  62,  63,  96,   100,  108, 

109,  111,  127,  128,  129,  189,  192, 

194,  199,  221,  249,  254,  284,  295. 
Cosmopolitan,  The,  298. 


INDEX 


357 


COTTON,  Jotix,  26,  27. 

Cotton  Boll,  The,  272. 

Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,   191, 

199. 

Cowper,  William  (1731-1800),  231. 
"CRADDOCK,    CHARLES   EGBERT," 

see  MURFREE. 
CRANCH,    CHRISTOPHER    P.,    156, 

154,  155,  247. 

CRAWFORD,  F.  MARION,  317. 
Crisis,  The,  42. 

CROTHERS,  SAMUEL  M.,  326,  309. 
Culprit  Fay,  The,  96. 
CUMMINS,  MARIA  S.,  147. 
CURTIS,  GEORGE  WILLIAM,  250-51. 

155,  163,  236,  242,  249,  267. 

DANA.  CHARLES  A.,  155,  249. 
DANA,   RICHARD  HENRY,   97,   94, 

111,  249. 
DANA,  RICHARD  HENRY,  JR.,  129, 

157,  190,  337. 
Dante  (1265-1321),  109,  200,  204, 

223,  243,  247,  254. 
Darwin,    Charles   R.    (1809-1882), 

231. 

DAVIS,  RICHARD  HARDING,  318. 
Day  of  Doom,  23. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  40,  39. 
Deer  slayer,  86,  84. 
Defoe,     Daniel     (1661-1731),     60, 

118,  157. 

DELANO,  MARGARET,  318,  302. 
Democracy,  224,  229. 
Democratic  Vistas,  257. 
Demosthenes   (u.  c.  384-322),  40, 

182. 
De  Quineey,  Thomas  (1785-1859) 

165,  229. 

Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,  119. 
Dial,  The,  154,  156,  163,  170,  222. 
Dickens,  Charles  (1812-1870),  89 

122,  144,  280,  296. 
DICKINSON,  EMILY,  290,  291    283 
Dixie,  248. 
Dorothy  Q.,  237,  240. 

Dowden,  Edward  (1843 ),  256. 

Doyle,  Arthur  Conan  (1859 ) 

119. 
DRAKE,   JOSEPH   RODMAN,  95,  96 

54,  97,  98,  111,  231. 


Drayton,Michael(1563-1631),  196. 
Dream  Life,  244. 
Drum- Taps,  257,  262. 
Dryden,  John   (1631-1700),    17.     ' 
DUNBAR,  PAUL,  L.,  316. 
DUNNE,  FINLEY  P.,  327. 
Dutchman's  Fireside,  The,  62. 
Duyckinck,  E.  A.  (di'kink),  337. 
Duyckinck,  G.  L.,  337. 
DWIGHT,  TIMOTHY,  43,  44,  45. 

Ebers,  (1837-1898),  129. 

EDWARDS,  JONATHAN,  29,  30  32 
37,  38,  61,  337. 

EGGLESTON,  EDWARD,  321,306, 307. 

Eleanor  a,  114. 

ELIOT,  CHARLES  WILLIAM,  30,  308. 

Eliot,  George  (1819-1880),  296. 

ELIOT,  JOHN,  19. 

Elsie  Venner,  237. 

ELY,  RICHARD  T.,  307. 

EMERSON,  RALPH  WALDO,  156- 
168,  54,  109,  126,  131,  134,  136, 
146,  154-155,  170,  171,  174,  175, 
177,  180,  182,  185,  214,  217,  221, 
223,  226,  229,  232-234,  238-240, 
242,247,  253,  256,  259,  260,  261, 
263,  264,  268,  283,  309,  337 

EMMETT,  DANIEL  D.,  248. 

Endymion,  196. 

ENGLISH,  THOMAS  D.,  248. 

Essays  of  Emerson,  163-166. 

EVANS,  AUGUSTA  J.,  303. 

Evangeline  (e  van'je  lin),  197. 

EVERETT,  EDWARD,  185,  73,  163 
187,  251. 

Fable  for  Critics,  221,  130. 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  122. 
Farewell   Address   of    Washington, 

40. 

Federalist,  The,  42. 
FELTON,  CORNELIUS  C.,  193. 
FIELD,  EUGENE,  284,  285. 
FIELDS,  JAMES  T.,  191,  222. 
Fire-Bringer,  The,  286. 
Fireside  Travels,  223,  229. 
FISKE,  JOHN,  323,  307. 
Flaubert  (1821-1880),  299. 
Flood  of  Years,  The,  110. 
Fool's  Prayer,  The,  283. 


358 


INDEX 


FOOTE,  MARY  HALLOCK,  321,  306. 
FOED,  PAUL  L.,  318. 
FOSTER,  STEPHEN  C.,  248. 
•Fox,  JOHN,  JR.,  320. 
FRANKLIN,   BENJAMIN,  32-37,  30, 

39,  53,  104,  165,  188,  260,  262, 

277,  337. 

FREDERIC,  HAROLD,  317. 
Freedom  of  the  Will,  30,  38. 
FREEMAN,  MRS.,  see  WILKINS. 
Freeman  s  Oath,  The,  18. 
FRENCH,  ALICE,  321,  306. 
FRENEAU,  PHILIP  (fre  no'),  45-49, 

94,  209,  240. 

FULLER,  HENRY  B.,  322,  306. 
FULLER,   MARGARET,  see  OSSOLI. 
FURNESS,  HORACE  HOWARD,  308. 

GARLAND,  HAMLIN,  321,  306. 
GARRISON,  WILLIAM  LLOYD,  186, 

187,  206,  219. 

General  History  of  Virginia,  20. 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  114. 
GEORGE,  HENRY,  325. 
Gibbon,  Edward  (1737-1794),  101. 
GILDER,   RICHARD   WATSON,   313, 

293. 
Gladstone,     William     E.      (1809- 

1898),  182,  231. 
GODFREY,  THOMAS,  24. 
GODKIN,  EDWIN  L.,  325,  308. 
Godwin,  William  (1756-1836),  58, 

118,  126. 

Goethe  (1749-1832),  197,  247. 
Gold  Bug,  The,  119. 
Goldsmith,     Oliver      (1728-1774) 

75,  77,  108,  212. 
GOUGH,  JOHN  B.  (gof),  163. 
Graham's  Magazine,  114. 
GRANT,  ROBERT,  317. 
Gray,   Thomas    (1716-1771),   231. 
Great  Divide,  The,  286. 
GREELEY,  HORACE,  155,  249. 
GRISWOLD,  RUFUS  WILMOT,   115. 
Guardian  Angel,  The,  237. 
GUINEY,  LOUISE  I.  (gi'nee),  314. 

Hail  Columbia,  43,  44. 

HALE,    EDWARD    EVERETT,     244, 

242,  252,  297,  296. 
Hale  in  the  Bush,  43. 


HALLECK,     FITZ-GREENE,     95-97, 

54,  98,  254,  337. 
HAMILTON,  ALEXANDER,  42. 
HARDY,  ARTHUR  SHERBURNE,  317. 

Hardy,  Thomas,  (1840 ),  297. 

"HARLAND,    MARION,"    see   TER- 

HUNE. 

Harper's  Magazine,  250,  251,  298. 
HARRIS,    JOEL    CHANDLER,    319, 

304. 

HARRIS,  WILLIAM  T.,  325. 
HARTE,    FRANCIS   BRET,   279-281, 

295,  297,  305,  337. 
Hasty  Pudding,  44. 
HAWTHORNE,  JULIAN,  317,  135. 
HAWTHORNE,  NATHANIEL,  130-147, 

39,  54,  60,  61,  64,  84,  111,  117, 

126,  154-156,  159,  164,  173,  192, 

193,  194,  196,  205,  221,  233,  240, 

260,  268,  295,  297,  305. 
HAY,  JOHN,  315,  287. 
HAYNE,  PAUL  H.,  270-272. 
HEARN,  LAFCADIO,  325. 
Hebe,  225. 

"HENRY,  O.,"  see  PORTER. 
HENRY,  PATRICK,  39,  40. 
Herrick,  Robert  (1591-1674),  289. 
HERRICK,  ROBERT,  322,  306. 

Hewlett,  Maurice  (1861 ),  143. 

Hiawatha  (he  a  wah'tha),  198,  199, 

146. 
HIGGINSON,     THOMAS     W.,     244, 

155,  193,  252,  297,  302. 
HILDRETH,  RICHARD,  188. 
Hoffman  (1776-1822),  118. 
HOLLAND,  JOSIAH   GILBERT,   249- 

50,  251,  297. 
HOLMES,  OLIVER  WENDELL,  230- 

242,  54,  131,  136,  161,  163,  191, 
193,  212,  213,  216,  220,  222,  225, 

243,  249,  250,  267r  278,  294,  295, 
297. 

Homer  (B.  c.  about  1000),  40,  45, 
54,  90,  93,  105,  231,  247,  253, 
258,  279. 

HOPKINSON,  FRANCIS,  44. 

HOPKINSON,  JOSEPH,  43. 

Horace  (B.  c.  65-8),  240,  284. 

House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  131,  135, 
139,  145. 

HOVEY,  RICHARD  (huv'y),  314, 293. 


INDEX 


359 


HOWARD,  BRONSON,  308. 
HOWE,  JULIA  WARD,  243. 
HOWELLS,    WILLIAM    DEAN,    298- 

300,  252,  277,  290,  295,  301. 
Huckleberry  Finn,  278. 
Humble  Romance,  A,  301. 
HUTCHINSON,  ELLEN  M.,  336. 
HUTTON,  LAURENCE,  326. 
Hymn  to  the  Night,  201. 
Hymns  of  the  Marshes,  274. 
Hyperion,  193» 

Ibsen  (1828-1906),  299. 

Ichabod  (ik'a  bod),  209,  183,  215. 

Idle  Man,  The,  97. 

Indian  Burying  Ground,   The,  47. 

Innocents  Abroad,  277,  278. 

Inscription  for  the  Entrance  to  a 
Wood,  107. 

IRVING,  WASHINGTON,  64-77,  54, 
55,  61,  62-63,  85,  98,  100,  108, 
111,  141,  188,  189,  192,  201,  204, 
223,  249,  251,  264,  278,  338. 

Israfel,  113,  124,126. 

JACKSON,  HELEN  FISKE,  282-284, 

297. 

JAMES,  HENRY,  300,  301,  295. 
JAMES,  WILLIAM,  308. 
JANVIER,  THOMAS,  317. 
JAY,  JOHN,  42. 
JEFFERSON,   THOMAS,   40,   41,  42, 

102,  184. 

Jeffrey,   Richard   (1773-1850),   70. 
JEWETT,   SARAH  ORNE,   318,   302. 
John  March,  Southerner,  305. 
Johnson,  Samuel,  (1709-1784),  40, 

101. 

JOHNSTON,  MARY,  320. 
JOHNSTON,RlCHARDMALCOLM,319, 

303. 

JORDAN,  DAVID  STARR,  325. 
JUDD,  SYLVESTER,  129. 

Kalevala,  The,  198. 

Kant  (1724-1804),  152. 

Keats,  John  (1795-1821),  106,  206. 

KENNEDY,  JOHN  P.,  63,  84,   114, 

118,  127. 

Kentucky  Cardinal,  A,  305. 
KEY,  FRANCIS,  SCOTT,  99. 


KING,  CAPTAIN  CHARLES,  321. 

KING,  GRACE,  320. 

Kingsley,  Charles  (1819-1875),  129. 

KlNNEY,   COATES,  249. 

Kipling.  Rudyard  (1865 ),  119, 

280,  297. 
Knickerbocker  History,  66,  67,  69, 

54,  75. 
Knickerbocker  Magazine,  99,   194. 

Lady  or  the  Tiger,  The,  303. 

Lamb,  Charles  (1775-1834),  19, 
30,  229. 

Lamplighter,  The,  147. 

LAMPMAN,  ARCHIBALD,.  316. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage  (1775- 
1864),  159,  248. 

LANIER,  SIDNEY  (la  neer'),  272- 
275,  271,  338. 

LARCOM,  LUCY,  244. 

Last  Leaf,  The,  233,  238,  241. 

Last  of  the  Mohicans,  82,  86,  91. 

LATHROP,  ROSE  HAWTHORNE,  135, 
173. 

Laus  Deo,  210. 

LAZARUS,  EMMA,  314. 

LEA,  HENRY  CHARLES,  322.  307. 

Leather  Stocking  Tales,  85,  89. 

Leaves  of  Grass,  255,  258-264. 

LELAND,  CHARLES  GODFREY,  327 

Liberator,  The,  207. 

Life  of  Columbus,  70. 

Life  of  Washington,  74,  75. 

Ligeia,  122. 

LINCOLN,  ABRAHAM,  185-6,  182, 
197,  223,  231,  248,  250,  260,  262, 
264. 

Lines  on  a  Bust  of  Dante,  243. 

Little  Beach  Bird,  The,  98. 

Little  Boy  Blue,  285. 

Little  Giffin  of  Tennessee,  271. 

LOCKE,  DAVID  Ross,  327. 

LODGE,  HENRY  CABOT,  323. 

LONDON,  JACK,  322,  306,  321,  304. 

LONGFELLOW,  HENRY  WADS- 
WORTH,  191-204,  28,  54,  117, 
126,  131,  132,  133,  136,  141,  146, 
164,  205,  213-214,  216,  217,  222, 
224,  225,  230,  233,  238,  239,  240 
245,  247,  260,  263,  271,  289,  294. 

Lost  Occasion,  The,  183. 


360 


INDEX 


LOUNDSBURY,    THOMAS   R.,    324. 

Lovewell's  Fight,  43. 

LOWELL,  JAMES  RUSSELL,  215-230, 
54,  83,  130,  131,  132,  136,  155, 
161,  174,  176,  190,  191,  193,  214, 
232-239,  243,  249-251,  253,  262, 
264,  267,  278,  289,  292,  294. 

Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  279. 

Lucretius  (B.  c.  95-52),  166. 

MABIE,  HAMILTON  WRIGHT,  326, 
293,  309. 

Macaulay,  Thomas  B.,  (1800- 
1859),  117,  189,  227. 

M'Fingal,  43. 

Mackenzie,  Henry  (1745-1831), 
58. 

MCMASTER,  JOHN  BACH,  324,  307, 

MADISON,  JAMES,  42. 

Magnolia   Christi  Americana,    27. 

MAHAN,  CAPTAIN  ALFRED  T.,  323, 
307. 

Mandeville,  Sir  John  (14th  cen 
tury),  249. 

Man  Without  a  Country,  The, 
244. 

Man  With  the  Hoe,  The,  287. 

Manzoni  (1785-1873),  60. 

Marble  Faun,   The,  136,  139,  145. 

Marco  Bozzaris,  97. 

Marcus  Aurelius  (121-180),  180. 

Margaret,  129. 

Marguerite,  210,  215. 

Marjorie  Daw,  290. 

MARKHAM,  EDWIN..  316,  287. 

MARSH,  GEO.  P.,  191. 

"MARVEL,  IK."  See  D.  G.  MIT 
CHELL. 

Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  122. 

Masque  of  Judgment,   The,  286. 

MATHER,  COTTON,  27-29,  37,  55, 
158,  159,  338. 

MATHER,  INCREASE,  27,  28. 

MATHER,  RICHARD,  27. 

MATTHEWS,  BRANDER,  317. 

MAYO,  WILLIAM  STARBUCK,   128. 

MELVILLE,  HERMAN,  128. 

Memories  of  President  Lincoln,  257, 
262. 

Mc-cdith,  George  (1828-1909), 
COG. 


MIFFLIN,  LLOYD,  313. 

MILLER,  CINCINNATUS  H.  ("JoA- 

QUIN")  (wa-ken'),  281,  282. 
Milton,  John  (1708-1674),  17,  23, 

203. 

MITCHELL,  DONALD  GRANT,  244. 
MITCHELL,  SILAS  WEIR,  317. 
MITCHELL,  SAMUEL  LATHAM,  66. 
Moby  Dick,  128. 
Modern  Instance,  A,  299. 
Montaigne  (1533-1592),  180. 
MOODY,  WILLIAM  VAUGHN,  285-7, 

308,  7. 

MOORE,  CLEMENT  C.,  100. 
Moore,   Thomas   (1779-1852),   70, 

96,  202. 

MORE,  PAUL  E.,  327,  309. 
MORRIS,  GEORGE  P.,  100,  98,  248, 

254. 
Mosses  From  an  Old  Manse,  134 

137,  143. 
MOTLEY,  JOHN  LOTHROP,  189,  222, 

238. 

MOULTON,  LOUISE  CHANDLER,  314. 
MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,  114,  119. 
MUIR,  JOHN,  325,  309. 
MULFORD,  ELISHA,  324. 
MURFREE,  MARY  N.,  320,  304. 
MURRAY,  LINDLEY,  53. 
My  Life  is  Like  the  Summer  Rose, 

100. 

My  Lost  Youth,  192,  203. 
My  Study  Windows',  223,  227-229. 

"NASBY,     PETROLEUM     V."     See 
LOCKE. 

Nation,  The,  298. 

National  Era,  148,  209. 

Nature,  160,  233. 

NEAL,  JOHN,  61. 

Nearer  Home,  248. 

Negro  Melodies,  248. 

NEWCOMB,  SIMON,  308. 

New  England  Nun,  A,  301. 

New  England  Primer,  19,  25,  231. 

Newman,  John  Henry  (1801-1890) 

165. 

New  York  Evening  Post,  105. 
New  York  Home  Journal,  98. 
New  York  Mirror,  98,  124,  254. 
Nicolay,  J.  G.,  315. 


INDEX 


361 


NORRIS,  FRANK,  322,  306. 
North  American  Review,  93,   103, 

222. 
NORTOX,   CHARLES  ELIOT,  242-3, 

222,  224,  247. 

O'BRIEX,  FITZ-JAMES,  317. 

0  Captain,  My  Captain,  258,  262. 

Old  Creole  Days,  304. 

Old  Folks  at  Home,  248. 

Old  Ironsides,  233,  240. 

Old  Oaken  Bucket,  100. 

Omar  Khayyam  (d.  1123),  166. 

Omoo,  128. 

On  a  Certain  Condescension  in 
Foreigners,  223,  229. 

ONDERDOXK,  JAMES  L.,  336 

O'REILLY,  JOHX  BOYLE,  313. 

Ossian  (about  3d  century),  254, 
258. 

OSSOLI,  MARGARET  FULLER  (os'so 
li),  156,  134,  154,  155,  221,  338. 

OTIS,  JAMES,  39,  40. 

Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  281. 

Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rock 
ing,  263. 

Overland  Monthly,  279. 

PAGE,  THOMAS  NELSOX,  319,  304. 
PAIXE,  THOMAS,  41,  209. 
PALFREY,  JOHX  G.  (pawl'fri),  188. 
Pan  in  Wall  Street,  292. 
PARKER,  GILBERT,  322. 
PARKER,  THEODORE,  151,  153-155. 
PARKMAX,    FRAXCIS,    189-90,  267, 

338. 

PARSOXS,  THOMAS  W.,  242-3,  247. 
PARTOX,  JAMES,  188. 
Party  and  Patronage,  251. 
Pastoral  Letter,  The,  208,  215. 
Pater,    Walter    (1839-1894),    126. 
Pathfinder,  The,  84,  86. 
PAULDIXG,  JAMES  K.,  62,  54,  63, 

65,  78,  98,  338. 
PAYXE,   JOHX   HOWARD,  99,  248, 

338. 

PECK,  SAMUEL  MIXTURX,  314. 
PERCIVAL,  JAMES  G.,  99. 
Petrarch  (1304-1374),  76,  230. 
PHELPS,   ELIZABETH  STUART,   see 

WARD. 


PHILLIPS,    WEXDELL,    186-7,    163, 

219,  251. 
PIATT,    JOHN    JAMES,    315,    287, 

298. 

PIATT,  SARAH  M.  B.,  316,  287. 
Pierce's  Almanack,  18. 
PIERPOXT,  JOHX,  94. 
Pilot  The,  87,  81. 
PIXKXEY,  EDWARD  C.,  100. 
Pioneers,  The,  78,  81,  86,  87. 
Plain     Language    from     Truthful 

James,  279. 
Plato  (B.  c.  429-347),  54,  89,  152, 

169,  180. 

Plutarch  (50-120?),  101. 
POE,  EDGAR  ALLAX,  112-127,  47, 

54,  60,  64,  98,  111,  130,  132,  141, 

142,  143,  191,  201,  202,  203,  221, 

225,  231,  234,  245,  249,  254,  263, 

268,  270,  272,  274,  297. 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast   Table,   231, 

236. 

Poets  of  America,  292,  6. 
Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  33. 
Poor  Voter  on  Election  Day,  210. 
Pope,  Alexander  (1688-1744),  17, 

231. 

PORTER,  SIDXEY,  320. 
Prairie,  The,  86,  87. 
Precaution,  80. 
PRESCOTT,    WILLIAM      HICKLIXG, 

189,  71,  74.  127,  338. 
Present  Crisis,  The,  218. 
PRIXCE,  THOMAS,  22. 
Prince  of  Parthia,  24. 
Professor   at   the   Breakfast    Table, 

236. 

Prophecy,  A,  46. 
Prueandl,  251. 
Psalm  of  Life,  194,  195. 
Purloined  Letter,  The,  119. 

Questions  of  Life,  212. 

Rabelais  (1483-1553),  278. 
Radcliffe,    Ann    (1764-1823),    58. 
Rain  Upon  the  Roof,  The,  249. 
Raleigh,  Walter  (of  University  of 

Glasgow),  230. 
Ramona,  284. 
Raven.   The.  115.  118.  124.  125. 


362 


INDEX 


READ,   THOMAS  BUCHANAN,    245, 

248. 

REALF,  RicHARD(Ralph),  315,  287. 
Reply  to  Hayne,  183. 
REPPLIER,  AGNES,  327. 
Reveries  of  a  Bachelor,  244. 
RHODES,  JAMES  FORD,  323,  307. 
RICHARDSON,  CHARLES  F.,  324,  6, 

336. 

RIDPATH,  JOHN  CLARK,  323. 
RILEY,  JAMES  WHITCOMB,  285,  7. 
RIPLEY,  GEORGE,  154-5,  134,  164, 

249. 

Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  299. 
RIVES,       AMELIE       (reevz),      see 

TROUBETSKOY. 
ROBERTS,    CHARLES   G.    D.,   316, 

308. 

Rollo  Books,  147. 
ROOSEVELT,  THEODORE,  324. 
Rossetti,  William  M.  (1829 — ),  256. 
ROWSON,  SUSANNA,  56,  61. 
ROYCE,  JOSIAH,  308. 
Rudder  Grange,  302. 
Ruskin,    John    (1819-1900),    230. 
RUSSELL,  IRWIN,  314. 
RYAN,  ABRAM  J.,  314. 

Sainte-Beuve  (1804-1869),  37. 

Salmagundi  Papers,  65,  62  63. 

SANTAYANA,  GEORGE,  313. 

Saturday  Visiter,  113. 

SAXE,  JOHN  G.,  243. 

Scarlet  Letter,   The,  135,  138,  143, 

145. 

Schiller  (1759-1805),  202. 
SCHOULER,  JAMES  (skoo'ler),  323, 

307. 

SCOLLARD,  CLINTON,  313. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter  (1771-1832),  47, 
60-71  passim,  86-96  passim,  108, 
203,  205,  253,  277,  296. 
Scribner's  Monthly,  250. 
SEDGWICK,  CATHERINE  M.,  61,  78. 
Seton,  Ernest  E.  Thompson,  326, 

309. 

Seventh  of  March  Speech,  183,  210. 
SEWALL,  SAMUEL,  22. 
Shakespeare,  William  (1564-1616), 
21,  24,  54,   101,  204,  206,  2*23, 
253,  254. 


SHALER,  NATHANIEL  S.,  308. 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe(1793-1822) 

56,  58,  106,  221. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip  (1554-1586),  17, 

195. 

SILL,  EDWARD  ROWLAND,  282,  283. 
SIMMS,    WILLIAM    GILMORE,    127, 

84,  270,  271,  303. 
Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  26. 
Sketch  Book,   The,  69,  54    70    71 

74,  75,  77,  192. 
S kipper  •  Ireson's  Ride,  210. 
SMITH,  F.  HOPKINSON,  319. 
SMITH,  GOLDWIN,  322,  307. 
SMITH,  CAPTAIN  JOHN,  19-21,  111. 
SMITH,  SAMUEL  F.,  243,  232,  238 
Smoke,  179. 
Smollett,    Tobias    George    (1721- 

1771),  87. 
Snow-Bound,  205,  212,  214    241 

250. 

Snow  Image,  The,  132,  135,  142. 
Song  of  the  Camp,  247. 
Songs  of  the  Sierras,  281. 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  114. 
Southey,  Robert  (1774-1843),  99, 

102. 

Spanish  Student,  The,  197. 
SPARKS,  JARED,  188. 
Specimen  Days,  257. 
Spenser,  Edmund  (1552-1599),  17 

105,  117,  141,  217. 
SPOFFORD,     HARRIET     PRESCOTT, 

318. 

Spy,  The,  84,  54,  81,  83. 
STANTON,  FRANK  L.,  315. 
Star-Spangled  Banner,  99. 
STEDMAN,     EDMUND     CLARENCE, 
291,  292,  6,  126,  167,  229,  241, 
248,  252,  272,  289,  298,  336,  337. 
Sterne,  Laurence  (1713-1768),  68. 
Stevenson,    Robert    Louis    (1850- 

1894),  93,  121,  173,  309. 
STOCKTON,  FRANK  R.,  302,  303. 
STODDARD,  CHARLES  W.,  315. 
STODDARD,       RICHARD       HENRY, 

247-8,  99,  109,  244,  291. 
STORY,  WILLIAM  W.,  242. 
Story  of  a  Bad  Boy,  290. 
STOWE,   HARRIET   BEECHER,   147- 
148,  209,  250,  284,  295,  302.~ 


INDEX 


363 


STRACHEY,  WILLIAM,  21. 
STUART,  RUTH  MCENERY,  320. 
SUMNER,  CHARLES,  186-7, 193,  208. 
Swallow  Barn,  63. 
Swift,   Jonathan   (1667-1745),   68, 

278. 
Swinburne,    Algernon    C.     (1837- 

-1909),   227,  230,  256,  274,  282. 
Symonds,  John  Addington  (1840- 

1893),  256. 
Symphony,  The,  274. 

TABB,  JOHN  B.,  314. 

Tales  of  a  Traveller,  70. 
Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  200. 
Tales   of  the   Grotesque   and   Ara 
besque,  115. 

TARKINGTON,  BOOTH,  321. 
TAYLOR,  BAYARD,  245-247,  6,  99. 

163,  242,  244,  249,  267,  273,  277, 

289,  291,  295. 

TAYLOR,  BENJAMIN  F.,  313. 
TENNEY,  TABITHA,  56,  61. 
Tennyson,  Alfred  (1809-1892)  105, 

106,  117,  201,  202,  204,  226,  231, 

263,  274. 

Tenth  Muse,  The,  23,  231. 
Tent  on  the  Beach,  213. 
TERHUNE,   MARY  VIRGINIA,  303. 
Thackeray,     William    M.     (1811- 

1863),  63,  89,  90,  92,  296. 
Thanatopsis,  102,  54,  94,  104,  107, 

110,282. 

"THANET,  OCTAVE,"  see  FRENCH. 
THAXTER,  CELIA,  314. 
THOMAS,  EDITH  M.,  314. 
THOMPSON,    DANIEL   PIERCE,    84. 
THOMPSON,  MAURICE,  325. 
THOREAU,  HENRY  DAVID  (tho'ro), 

169-180,  131,  134,  154-156,  164, 

215,  230,  242,  257,  292,  309. 
Threnody,  167,  226. 
THWING,      CHARLES      FRANKLIN, 

308. 

TICKXOR,  FRANCIS  O.,  271. 
TICKNOR,  GEORGE,  190-191,  217. 
Timothy  Titcomb  Letters,  249. 
TIMROD,  HENRY,  270-272,273,274. 
To  a  Honeybee,  48. 
To  a  Waterfowl,  104,  107. 
Tolstoi  (1828-1911),  299. 


TOURGEE,  ALBION  W.  (toor  zhay'), 

319. 
TROUBETSKOY,  PRINCESS  AMELIE, 

320. 

TRUMBULL,  JOHN,  43,  44. 
Turgenieff  (1818-1883),  299. 
"TWAIN,  MARK,"  see  CLEMENS. 
Twice- Told   Tales,   133,   134,    137, 

233. 
Two   Years  Before  the  Mast,   129, 

157,  190. 
TYLER,  MOSES  COIT,   324,  6,  40, 

307. 

TYLER,  ROYALL,  25. 
Typee,  128. 

Ulalume,  115,  126. 
Uncle  Remus,  304. 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  147,  284. 

VAN  DYKE,  HENRY,  326,  309. 

Venus  of  Milo,  The,  282. 

Vergil  (B.  c.  70-19),  45,  93,  156, 

247. 

Verne  (1828-1905),  119. 
VERY,  JONES,  156,  154. 
Victorian  Poets,  292. 
Views  Afoot,  246. 
Village  Blacksmith,  The,  196. 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,    The,  220. 

221,  225,  176,  263. 
Voiceless,  The,  240. 
Voices  of  the  Night,  194,  233. 
Voltaire  (1694-1778),  37,  188. 
Volunteer  Boys,  The,  49. 
VON  HOLST,  HERMAN  E.,  323,  307. 

Waiting  by  the  Gate,  106. 
Walden,  172,  174-176,  178. 
WALKER,   FRANCIS   A.,   325,   307. 
WALLACE,  LEWIS,  320. 
Walpole  Horace   (1717-1797),  58. 
Walton,    Izaak    (1593-1683),    180. 
"WARD,  ARTEMUS,"  see  BROWNE. 
WARD,        ELIZABETH          STUART 

PHELPS,  318,  302. 
WARD,  NATHANIEL,  261. 
WARE,  WILLIAM,  129. 
WARNER,  CHARLES  DUDLEY,  251, 

249,  252,  290,  297. 
WASHINGTON,  GEORGE,  40,  32, 188. 


364 


INDEX 


WEBSTER,    DANIEL,    182-184,   40, 
84,  131,  185,  210,  254,  268,  271. 
WEBSTER,  NOAH,  53,  56. 
Week  on  the  Coivsord  and  Merri- 

mac  Rivers,  172,  177. 
WENDELL,  BARRETT,  324,  6, 7,  220, 

307,  336. 

WHARTON,  EDITH,  319,  295. 
WHIPPLE,  EDWIN  P.,  191. 
WHITE,    ANDREW   DICKSON,    323. 
White,    Gilbert   (1720-1793),    180. 
White,  Henry  Kirke  (1785-1806), 

102. 

WHITE,  RICHARD  GRANT,  191. 
WHITE,  STEWART  E.,  326,  309. 
WHITE,  WM.  ALLEN,  321. 
Whitefield,  George(1714-1770),30. 
WHITMAN,    WALT,    252-264,    109, 

242,  267,  269,  276,  277,  293,  338. 
WHITNEY,  MRS.  A.  D.  T.,  318. 
WHITTIER,  JOHN  GREENLEAF,  205- 

214,  22,  54,  79,  131,  136,   183, 

216,  219,  224,  225,  230,  234,  238, 

241,  242,  250,  253,  257,  260,  338. 
Wieland,  57,  59. 
WIGGIN,  KATE  DOUGLAS,  319. 

WlGGLESWORTH,  MlCHAEL,  23. 

WILCOX,  ELLA  WHEELER,  316. 


WILDE,     RICHARD     HENRY.  100 

270. 

Wild  Honeysuckle,  The,  47,  94. 
WILKINS,  MARY  E.,  301,  302. 
WILLIAMS,  ROGER,  25,  26. 
William  Wilson,  121,  112. 
WILLIS,   NATHANIEL  P.,   98,   124 

179,  221,  246,  249,  289. 

WlLLSON,   FORCEYTHE,   271. 

WILSON,  WOODROW,  324,  307. 
WINSOR,  JUSTIN,  322,  307. 
WINTER.  WILLIAM,  326. 
WINTHROP,  THEODORE,  316,  84. 

WOODBERRY,  GEORGE  E.,  313,  113, 

293,  309,  336. 
Woodnotes,  166. 

WOODWORTH,  SAMUEL,  100,  248. 
WOOLMAN,  JOHN,  30. 
WOOLSON,  CONSTANCE  FENIMORE, 

321,  306. 
Wordsworth,        William        (1770* 

1850),  101,   102,   108,   159,  261. 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  196. 

Yankee  Doodle,  42. 
Yemassee,  The,  128. 
Youth's  Companion,  98. 

Zenobia,  129. 


14  DAY  USE 

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